Speaking to reporters after a meeting with embattled President Charles Taylor, Chea said he would be part of "a committee going to Ghana today to begin talks about a ceasefire and the modalities."

"There must be a cessation of hostilities and I can tell you there are good prospects for a ceasefire," he added.

Meanwhile, West African diplomats were due to hold meet Taylor in Monrovia to try to mediate a truce on Tuesday, a day after fierce fighting prompted a French-led evacuation of more than 500 foreign nationals and UN staff.

But the president's office said Ghanaian Foreign Minister Addo Akufo-Addo and Mohamed ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) which is brokering peace talks being hosted by Ghana, had been stuck in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown.

"They will come to Monrovia tomorrow," an official said.

Taylor moved from the presidential mansion Tuesday afternoon to his private residence on the route to the airport, an AFP correspondent reported.

Defence Minister Chea said government troops were gaining the upper hand but admitted the going was tough for loyalist soldiers.

Speaking of "immense improvement at the various frontlines," he said: "Things are difficult but I think we have one thing the aggressors don't -- we know the support of our people is with us."

Chea also accused fighters from neighbouring Sierra Leone -- where a UN-backed court last week indicted Taylor for crimes against humanity in that country's brutal 11-year civil war -- of fighting along side the Liberian insurgents.

"We have got reports saying that and POWs have confirmed this. Sierra Leoneans are involved to a very large extent."

On Tuesday, there appeared to be a lull in the fighting in and around Monrovia for the first time in days.

But UN officials warned the country, which has been ravaged by more than a decade of almost continuous conflict, was sliding towards catastrophe.

"It's total anarchy, it's not a war like any other," Christiane Berthiaume, a spokeswoman for the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), told journalists in Geneva.

Foreign aid workers have pulled out of Liberia and the WFP was unable to deliver much-needed aid, she said.

Government troops meanwhile mounted more roadblocks especially at entry points to Monrovia, as the government said a captured rebel had confessed that at least 3,000 insurgents had infiltrated the seaside city.

The main rebel group Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), together with a recently emerged rebel group, Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), has won control of at least 12 of Liberia's 15 counties.

The rebels penetrated to the edge of Monrovia after renewed fighting erupted early last week as Taylor flew to Ghana on Wednesday for the start of the first face to face peace talks with the rebels.

But he swiftly returned after being indicted for war crimes by the UN-backed tribunal in Sierra Leone.

The escalating unrest in Monrovia meanwhile prompted French troops to evacuate 512 foreign nationals from the capital on Monday.

Some 200,000 people have died over the past decade, and the latest conflict was sparked in 1999, when LURD took up arms against Taylor, a former warlord in the civil war that broke out in 1990 and ended in 1997, the year Taylor was elected president.

UN aid agencies estimate that more than 60 percent of Liberia's population have fled their homes in the past 10 years because of the recurrent civil war.

The most recent fighting has transformed the capital into a giant refugee camp with tens of thousands on the streets.

Thousands of displaced people have taken shelter in a 35,000-seat sports complex after the government said they could seek refuge there, but the conditions remain appalling.

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