By JONATHAN PAYE-LAYLEH
Associated Press Writer
MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) - Hundreds of Liberian soldiers rioted outside a U.N. disarmament camp Monday, blasting AK-47s into the air to demand advance payment to turn in their guns.
The melee came one day into the start of the disarmament program, part of an August peace deal aimed at ending 14 years of conflict that have killed 250,000 people.
An estimated 40,000 ill-trained and largely unpaid soldiers roam Liberia. They include forces loyal to former President Charles Taylor and the rebel militias who ousted him.
The United Nations has promised stipends to each soldier who enters disarmament camps. Those involved in Monday's uprising, all former Taylor fighters, want the money before complying.
``We want the U.N. to pay us $150 before we lay down our weapons,'' Fallah Varney, a spokesman for some of the fighters told the Associated Press at one center outside the capital, Monrovia.
Ten to 15 men armed with AK-47s surrounded Varney as he spoke.
Nigerian U.N. peacekeepers went to the camp, where the shooting continued into the afternoon.
The soldiers also complained the camp was giving them wheat flour to eat rather than their preferred meal of rice.
More than 1,000 of Taylor's former forces had reported to the disarmament camp on Sunday, the opening day of the program.
In return for their weapons, the fighters are to receive a total of $300 as well as medical care and counseling. The U.N.-sponsored program is expected to take nine months.
The Aug. 18 peace deal was reached one week after Taylor fled to exile in Nigeria as rebels laid siege to his mortar-shelled capital.
Taylor, a Libyan-trained guerrilla fighter, launched Liberia into conflict in 1989, with an insurgency bent on taking control of the country. He won elections in 1997 and rebels took up arms against him two years later.
Liberia was founded by former American slaves.
