Sharpton wants African Americans to demand that Bush sends peacekeepers to Liberia.

Sharpton: African Americans should help decide whether United States sends peacekeepers to Liberia

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) -- Black Americans should help U.S. officials decide whether or not to send peacekeeping troops to Liberia, Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton said Sunday in Ghana -- where negotiators are working on a peace plan despite fresh fighting in the war-torn West African nation founded by freed American slaves.

U.S. President George W. Bush is considering whether to send troops to bolster a promised West African force that Liberians hope will end more than a decade of fighting in the country.

"The African American community can have a lot of impact on what position will come from the U.S. government based on where we want to go and recommend," said Sharpton, a civil rights leader who plans to run in the 2004 U.S. presidential elections.

Sharpton is leading a delegation of prominent black Americans, including Princeton African-American studies scholar Cornel West, to Ghana's capital, where Liberian peace talks are being held.

The group hopes to travel to Liberia to meet with embattled President Charles Taylor although the fighting has become increasingly fierce in recent days with a rebel push into the capital.

Sharpton told The Associated Press after meeting with rebel and government delegates he had yet to decide whether he thought the United States should commit troops to the country.

"America should do whatever it can in conjunction with African leaders. What that should be, we'll make that determination after the talks," with other delegates and possibly Taylor, Sharpton said.

Bush has made Taylor's departure a precondition for sending troops. Taylor, a former warlord and indicted war criminal has accepted a Nigerian offer of sanctuary but said he would only leave when what he described as a "sufficient" number of peacekeepers were on the ground.

The west African regional bloc meditating peace efforts in Ghana has promised to send 1,500 peacekeeping troops in the coming weeks to monitor a June 17 cease-fire agreement between forces loyal to Taylor and rebels seeking his ouster.

The United States -- under international pressure to send forces to Liberia -- has indicated it won't make a decision until west African troops are on the ground and the situation can be better assessed.

Monrovia has become overrun with thousands of refugees who have fled three recent attacks on the city. Aid workers are warning of a humanitarian disaster as food stores dwindle and disease festers amid heavy fighting in parts of the city.

Sharpton said his delegation's mission is humanitarian in nature, but he would try and help ease along the peace negotiations that began on June 4 -- the day a U.N.-backed court in nearby Sierra Leone indicted Taylor on war crimes for his role in supporting a rebel group's terror campaign in that country.

Sharpton said he wouldn't choose sides in the conflict, which has raged since insurgents took up arms against Taylor in 1999, adding "wherever we can help the peace process, we will."

"The side that doesn't want to see the continual murders and pain and starvation in Liberia is the side that will ultimately win the trust of the people," Sharpton said.

Taylor, a former warlord elected president in 1997, launched Liberia's unrest in 1989 with his own insurgency.

Sharpton was also accompanied by the Rev. Al Sampson of Chicago; attorney Lewis Meyers; and Akbar Muhammad, Islam expert and Africana studies professor at New York's Binghamton University.

The linked article, unfortunately, is riddled with errors.

"Sharpton first earned national notoriety for promoting the false claims of Tawana Brawley, a black teenager who in 1987 alleged she had been abducted and raped by a gang of white youths."

Brawley said she was raped by "white cops."

"Sharpton inflamed a race riot over the incident, but a New York grand jury found no evidence of any crime against Brawley and it is now widely acknowledged that she concocted the allegation. Steve Pagones, a prosecutor whom Sharpton blamed for the false incident, won a $345,000 verdict against Sharpton for defamation."

I'm not familiar with the "race riot" the writer mentioned, and I've read entire books on the Brawley case (most notably, Outrage). While it's possible I'm wrong, note that the author provides no specifics that could be confirmed or disconfirmed.

A January 16, 2003, column by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe recounted Sharpton's involvement in the infamous 1991 Crown Heights riots. Jacoby described the episode as follows:

"A Hasidic Jewish driver in Brooklyn's Crown Heights section accidentally kills Gavin Cato, a 7-year-old black child, and anti-Semitic riots erupt. Sharpton races to pour gasoline on the fire. At Gavin's funeral he rails against the 'diamond merchants' - code for Jews - with 'the blood of innocent babies' on their hands. He mobilizes hundreds of demonstrators to march through the Jewish neighborhood, chanting, 'No justice, no peace.' A rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, is surrounded by a mob shouting 'Kill the Jews!' and stabbed to death."

Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death by Lemrick Nelson Jr. only hours after Josef Lifsh accidentally killed Gavin Cato and seriously injured little Angela Cato. The accident and the murder occurred on the same night, days before Gavin's funeral. This is really bad for Jeff Jacoby, who is usually the model of rigorous reporting.

Jacoby noted that Sharpton's racial arson campaign continued in 1995 with the Freddy's Fashion Mart fiasco:

"When the United House of Prayer, a large black landlord in Harlem, raises the rent on Freddy's Fashion Mart, Freddy's white Jewish owner is forced to raise the rent on his subtenant, a black-owned music store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensues; Sharpton uses it to incite racial hatred. 'We will not stand by,' he warns malignantly, 'and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.' Sharpton's National Action Network sets up picket lines; customers going into Freddy's are spat on and cursed. 'We're going to see that this cracker suffers,' says Sharpton's colleague Morris Powell. On Dec. 8, one of the protesters bursts into Freddy's, shoots four employees point-blank, then sets the store on fire. Seven employees die in the inferno."

My understanding is that Fred Harari, the owner of Freddie's, was simply the front man for the United House of Prayer, and had no say in the matter; United House of Prayer ORDERED him to throw out the African record store owner. And Morris Powell's follower, Roland Smith Jr. aka Abubunde Mulocko, shot more than four people (though he murdered a total of seven, between shooting and immolating them), but at least one of his shooting victims survived.

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