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MONROVIA, July 6 (AFP) - A peace conference on Liberia opens Monday in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou but both Monrovia and rebels fighting President Charles Taylor's government will be absent, thereby rendering the talks virtually meaningless.

The three-day meeting is sponsored by the Liberian Leadership Forum, which groups prominent Liberian politicians living in exile such as former interim president Amos Sawyer and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who was runner-up to Taylor in the last presidential elections.

It will be attended by members of Liberian opposition parties and civil leaders. The meeting is being funded by the George Soros Foundation and the Burkina Faso government.

"The Economic Community of West African States and the Organisation of African Unity have given very strong support to and will address the conference," the organisers said in a statement.

Both Taylor's government and the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebel group said the Ouagadougou talks were doomed from the start.

Taylor's Information Minister Reginald Goodridge told Nampa-AFP that the Liberian government had not been invited to the conference.

"The meeting is organised and orchestrated by politicians in self-imposed exile who attempted to have a similar meeting in Washington last weekend but the whole thing ended in a row. It was a fiasco.

"The characters involved ... are failed politicians," he said.

Goodridge said the "real" peace conference on Liberia was the one being organised by the government in Monrovia this month. LURD rebels have said they will not attend any meeting in Liberia as long as Taylor is in power.

Liberian government forces have fought since 1999 against the LURD and military actions have been on the rise since May.

President Taylor announced a state of emergency in February following a rebel advance almost on Monrovia's doorstep and clamped down with a series of draconian laws.

LURD political adviser Charles Bennie said the Ouagadougou meeting was "doomed and bound to amount to zero.

"We have received an invitation but we are not going. The organisers are hand in glove with Taylor despite appearances and moreover it is being held in Burkina Faso, a country whose president has been the chief surrogate engineer in destroying Liberia.

"Blaise Compaore has had and still enjoys close links with Taylor," he said.

Others have also expressed their doubts.

Opposition figure Togba-Nah Tipoteh said: "I see no need for Liberians to meet outside of Liberia to resolve their differences when they can meet here."

Monday's meeting follows two conferences on Liberia this year sponsored by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). One was held in the Nigerian capital Abuja and the other in Ivory Coast's political capital Yamoussoukro.

The Yamoussoukro meeting ended with the ECOWAS proposing a ceasefire or negotiations between the government and the rebels.

Taylor's regime rejected it on the grounds that these would "legitimize" the LURD.

Civic groups, including the Civil Society Movement of Liberia, Liberian Women's Initiative and the Inter-Religious Council of Liberia, are sending representatives to the conference and say the talks will be good as a "brainstorming session."

Their optimism has few takers.

"The likelihood of the conference yielding any positive results is slim considering that neither the rebel LURD nor the Liberian government will be represented at the deliberations," said Monrovia resident Cyrus Brown.

Freelance journalist Abdullah Dukuly added: "Any conference that does not involve the belligerent parties is bound to fail. You first have to put out the fire gutting a building before you can enter it."
Nampa-AFP WEB story ENDS (NAMPA 060253)

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