The Liberian government rejected a new truce offer by Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) on Tuesday, and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged a quick deployment of peacekeepers in Liberia which he said has seen a "dramatic deterioration of the situation."

The Liberian government's chief negotiator at peace talks in Ghana's capital, Accra, rejected the LURD cease-fire offer as insufficient.

"Withdrawing to the Freeport just isn't good enough. It's unacceptable," Liberia's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Lewis Brown, said.

Cease-fire meant the insurgents "must withdraw from the capital Monrovia altogether," Brown said.

The LURD must release their stranglehold on the capital city and retreat to the positions they held prior to the June 17 cease-fire agreement, Brown added.

Earlier in the day, LURD, the main rebel group in Liberia, declared a unilateral cease-fire. A rebel delegate at the peace talks in Accra said they would pull back to Monrovia's port.

However, rebels in and around Monrovia said their pledged cease-fire would not be effective until the government troops loyal to President Charles Taylor stop attacking their forces.

Annan on Tuesday urged the Security Council to make an early decision on a UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia in view of the worsening situation in the country.

In a letter to the Security Council, Annan said he was "deeply concerned" at the dramatic deterioration of the situation on the ground following renewed fighting in the capital Monrovia.

Annan asked the Security Council to approve a mandate for the quick transfer of Nigerian peacekeeping troops from Sierra Leone to Liberia.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is visiting Britain, said West African peacekeepers would be sent to Liberia in "a few days," but Nigeria needed support for their deployment.

"We have two battalions of over 1,500. They are ready to go in," Obasanjo said during an interview with BBC TV News on Monday.

"We cannot do that alone. We will do it with our West African brothers and we will do it with the support and backing of Africa and the world," Obasanjo said.

West African leaders will hold an emergency summit on Liberia's crisis in Accra on Thursday.

The summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was scheduled after military chiefs failed Monday to set a date for the deployment of a peacekeeping force in war-torn Liberia.

Military chiefs of ECOWAS on Monday met in Accra to discuss when to deploy Nigeria's peacekeeping troops to Liberia, where fighting between government force and rebels became fiercer in recent days.

(Xinhua News Agency July 30, 2003)