MONROVIA (AFP) - UN peacekeepers arrested a dissident rebel leader and seized weapons in a clampdown on the Liberian capital on the last day of a campaign to disarm fighters in the west African state.

AFP/PAM/File Photo

General Philip Kamara of the main rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and one other still-unidentified LURD member were arrested at Kamara's home in Monrovia's Paynesville district, UN military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Brendan Geraghty confirmed.

Two AK-47 rifles were seized, UN mission spokesman James Boynton added.

Ghanaian peacekeepers told AFP in Paynesville that some 80 LURD fighters had been detained along with other weapons.

The seized weapons looked to be among those used in riots on Thursday and Friday, which spread from the densely populated district across Monrovia, stirring fears of a resumption of the conflict that has battered Liberia (news - web sites) for nearly 14 years.

An AFP correspondent saw the bodies of six people killed in the two days of violence that also left dozens of injured with burns, cuts and bullet wounds. Churches, religious schools and mosques were torched, and looting was rampant.

The houses of two LURD political leaders, key members of the national transitional government, were also razed.

The unrest in Monrovia, coupled with ethnic tensions pitting mostly Muslim Mandingos -- from whom LURD drew its strength -- against other mainly Christian ethnicities, showed that the capital remains well-armed despite a massive UN disarmament operation, which ended its voluntary phase on Sunday.

Some 93,000 people from three warring factions including LURD enrolled in the program that carried an initial 50 million dollar price tag, according to the latest UNMIL figures.

Only 26,000 weapons were collected at the eight disarmament sites nationwide, including three in LURD territory, even as reports abounded that sizeable caches were being hidden or sneaked out over Liberia's porous borders with northern neighbor Guinea and Ivory Coast to the east for future use.

Six west African heads of state are due here Wednesday to mark the official disbanding of the armies of former president Charles Taylor and the rebel movements who took arms against them in a 1999 civil war that was declared over in August of last year.

But after an appeal from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) for regional leaders to re-engage in the Liberian peace process, it is likely that talks with chairman Gyude Bryant will focus on the recent unrest.

Sunday marks the closure of the four remaining disarmament camps -- in Zwedru, Harper, Ganta and Voinjama -- and an end to an incentive package of 300 dollars and a promise of vocational training or schooling.

Mopping-up operations will continue at mobile sites that have traveled to remote areas such as Greenville and Barclayville in Sinoe and Grand Kru counties respectively.

"This is just the end of the voluntary phase; it does not mean we are finished," said Clive Jachnik, the UN disarmament coordinator. "Now we move to encouragement and then to enforcement."

Such reassurances could ring hollow for the 1.5 million people crammed into Monrovia and confined to their homes under an emergency curfew since Friday afternoon to rein in what Bryant called the work of "hooligans and vandals".

The curfew continued Sunday as gunshots popped in the streets of downtown.

The riots flared from an apparent land dispute into a popular indictment of life in Monrovia, which like much of the rest of the country, Africa's oldest independent republic, is without running water and electricity.

Roads are impassable and despite Liberia's lush forest and fertile land, not enough people are able to tend crops to feed the population. Unemployment is as high as 80 percent.

Prices of staples such as rice and fuel have skyrocketed, while money pledged by international development partners has been slow to arrive amid worry about government corruption and Liberia's real potential for stability in the run-up to elections in October 2005.

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