Liberian Leader Heads to the US for Talks with Mittal, Firestone

Posted 17 October 2006 @ 09:11 am EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

MONROVIA (AP) - Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf left for the United States for talks to finalize a once heavily criticized 25-year-long iron exploitation concession deal with the world's largest steel firm Mittal, her office said.

"President Sirleaf will be concluding talks with Mittal Steel which is interested in investing in the Liberian iron ore (industry)," her office said in a statement announcing her departure.

Global Witness, a non-governmental organisation probing links between the exploitation of natural resources, conflict and human rights abuses, said earlier this month that the 900 million dollar (709-million-euro) deal was heavily skewed against Liberia and its recovery efforts.

"The agreement is heavily weighted against the Liberian government, ceding important sovereign and economic rights to Mittal -- almost creating a state within a state," Global Witness' director Patrick Alley said in a statement earlier this month.

Sirleaf ordered the deal, entered into by a predecessor transitional government in August 2005, five months before her arrival to office, reviewed.

Global Witness said the deal in its original form would have impacted on the west African country's control of major national assets such as the railways and key port, while it also had the potential to limit Liberia's capacity to regulate human rights, environment and taxation issues.

In the United States, Sirleaf was also due to meet officials from Firestone rubber producer, Liberia's largest employer and one of the few companies that survived the upheaval of the country's brutal war.

Liberia's rich natural resources were pillaged through corruption and civil war for over two decades and now the country is looking to rebuild its economy and infrastructure under the nine-month old democratically-elected government.