Defence Minister Daniel Chea told AFP he was at the front line in the city's northwestern Duala area, but declined to comment on the state of fighting there and would not confirm reports that President Charles Taylor had personally taken charge of a counter offensive.

But residents contacted by phone said heavy gunfire could still be heard in the outskirts of the city on Saturday afternoon.

The country's main rebel group, the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), on Friday pushed to within five kilometres (three miles) of the centre, then announced it had ordered its men to halt the offensive.

LURD, which launched its insurgency against Taylor four years ago, controls much of Liberia, where almost uninterrupted civil war has left an estimated 200,000 people dead since the early 1990s.

Their latest advance came as peace talks on Liberia were hurriedly suspended in Ghana just after they had begun.

About 115,000 people, who had over the years fled fighting in other parts of the country, were living in camps on the edge of Monrovia, and most of those were believed to have joined residents and headed downtown after Friday's LURD push.

The government was Saturday urging those fleeing the fighting to take refuge in a stadium in the east of the city, where it said it would distribute food and medicine.

Government troops and police have requisitioned any civilian vehicles they can find in the city, according to witnesses.

"I left Brewerville the day before yesterday, but I don't know anyone here and I can't find my family," said a bewildered Othello Parker as he wandered through the city centre.

Parker, whose Monrovia suburb was raided by rebels on Thursday, said the only belongings he had were the clothes on his back, now soaked by the rain that has poured down on this Atlantic port for the last two days.

Pick-up trucks bearing tense pro-militia militia fighters hurtled through the city's streets, where shops have not opened for days.

European Union nationals, as well as workers from UN and non-governmental aid agencies, have gathered at the EU's offices in the Mambo Point area in central Monrovia in preparation for a possible evacuation.

At the nearby US embassy armed American soldiers were on high alert, while outside on the streets thousands of displaced Liberians milled around, seeking shelter.

The United States on Friday ordered its non-essential diplomats to leave Liberia, a state founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.

And US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, noting that Taylor himself said Wednesday he would step down in January 2004, said Washington believed he should go as soon as possible.

"We think it's now important therefore for Liberians to create an effective ceasefire in conjunction with the early departure of President Taylor and the creation of the transitional government in preparations for elections," he said Friday.

During a brief trip to Ghana for the official opening ceremony of the peace talks on Wednesday, Taylor was indicted by a UN tribunal in Sierra Leone for war crimes committed in that country's 11-year civil war which ended last year.

The latest unrest in Liberia has forced some 300,000 Liberians to flee to neighbouring countries and claimed thousands more lives.

Both government and insurgents have been accused of widespread rights abuses, killing, rape, torture and using child soldiers.

The west African regional grouping ECOWAS, organising the peace negotiations in Ghana, said the talks had been suspended until Monday.

WAR.WIRE