Warlord disappears before trial

ABUJA, Nigeria -- Former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor slipped away just after Nigeria reluctantly agreed to transfer him to a war crimes tribunal, and the White House suggested Tuesday that President Bush might cancel a meeting with Nigeria's leader.\nThe Nigerian government said Taylor vanished Monday night from his villa in the southern city of Calabar, where he had lived in exile since being forced from power under a 2003 peace deal that ended Liberia's civil war.\nThe announcement came three days after President Olusegun Obasanjo -- under pressure from Washington and others -- agreed to surrender Taylor to a U.N.-backed tribunal. He would be the first African leader to face trial for crimes against humanity.\n"Right now we're looking for answers from the Nigerian government about the whereabouts of Charles Taylor," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.\nHe refused to speculate about whether somebody within the government was involved. "It is the responsibility of the Nigerian government to see that he is conveyed to the special court in Sierra Leone," McClellan said. "We expect the government of Nigeria to fulfill this commitment."\nThe U.S.-educated Taylor has been indicted by the tribunal on charges of committing crimes against humanity while in office by aiding and directing a rebel movement during Sierra Leone's 1991-2001 civil war. He was accused of trading guns and gems with the insurgents, including child fighters, who terrorized victims by chopping off their arms, legs, ears and lips.\nThe former warlord also plunged Liberia into years of civil war in 1989 when he led a small rebel band that invaded from neighboring Ivory Coast, and he is subject to arrest if he returns to his home country.\nTaylor has also been accused of harboring al-Qaida suicide bombers who attacked the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing 12 Americans and more than 200 Africans.\nThe Nigerians promised Saturday to hand over the 57-year-old ex-Liberian president but made no moves to arrest him.\nInformation Minister Frank Nweke told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Obasanjo was "shocked" by Taylor's disappearance.\nA government statement said Obasanjo was creating a panel to investigate Taylor's disappearance. The statement raised the possibility he might have been abducted, but did not elaborate.\nA Nigerian security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said Taylor was in a guarded convoy traveling from Calabar to Port Harcourt, the site of the nearest airport, when the cars were stopped.\nDiplomats and other Nigerian officials privately offered two different versions of how Taylor could have escaped, saying he was either allowed to flee or gunmen possibly hired by Taylor himself opened fire on the convoy to liberate him.\nPolice said all 22 officers in Taylor's security detail were detained.\nTaylor's residence in Calabar, a hillside compound of red-roofed buildings 450 miles southeast of the capital, Abuja, stood nearly deserted Tuesday. Neighbors said Liberian members of Taylor's coterie, which numbered in the dozens, had begun leaving in recent days.\nThe U.N. Security Council expressed surprise and concern at Taylor's disappearance and Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he planned to talk to the Nigerian authorities about it.\nTribunal prosecutor Desmond de Silva warned that Taylor was "a threat to the peace and security of West Africa."\n"His disappearance now from under the eye of a regional superpower ... puts the whole region on the highest alert," de Silva added.\nLiberian Information Minister John McClain told The Associated Press that the government was aware that Taylor's "alleged disappearance" might create anxiety and was "doing all it can to ensure the peace, security and tranquility of our nation."\nObasanjo, who had granted Taylor asylum under an internationally brokered agreement that helped end Liberia's 14-year civil war, initially resisted calls to surrender Taylor.\nBut he relented Saturday after Liberia's new President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf asked that Taylor be handed over for trial.\nAfrican leaders have been reluctant to see the continent's former presidents or dictators brought to justice, apparently fearful they would be the next to be accused of human rights abuses or other crimes.