Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc which brokered the June 17 ceasefire for Liberia, said he would assess the situation on the ground.

"We hope that all these problems are exaggerated -- the last thing we need now is an escalation on the military front," he told AFP in Abidjan from Ghana, where peace talks are under way.

Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea Monday accused rebels of continuing to attack government forces, adding that Monrovia was awaiting a response from ECOWAS on the alleged truce violations.

Chea told AFP in Monrovia that his men were respecting the ceasefire.

"We are all at the negotiating table, I think ECOWAS should use their influence to call LURD and Model to stop their attacks," he said, referring to the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy main rebel group and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia, another insurgent movement.

Chea said rebels had attacked loyalist forces in the northern town of Gollu, near the Guinean frontier, in the south-eastern port of Greenville and in the town of Kwendin.

"Fifteen persons were killed in Kwendin, (there were) five soldiers among them," Chea said. "Lot of mortars were fired in Greenville."

Liberia has been riven by almost incessant war since 1990.

The talks in Ghana are focussed now on the composition of an interim government after the departure of embattled President Charles Taylor, who now only controls a fifth of his war-ravaged country and was indicted on June 4 for war crimes allegedly committed during Sierra Leone's civil war.

Taylor, a former warlord who played a leading role in an earlier seven-year conflict in Liberia which ended in 1997, the year he was elected, recently accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria after agreeing to quit.

But Taylor has not given a date and has stressed he will not leave until an international peacekeeping force arrives to ensure a smooth transition.

Meanwhile, US President George W. Bush was Monday still undecided on international calls -- led by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and France -- to lead a multinational military force into Liberia.

"You should not anticipate an announcement today," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters just hours before Bush and Annan were to discuss global flaspoints.

On Sunday, Liberia's deputy chief of staff General Benjamin Yeaten said loyalist forces had been put on "maximum alert" following rebel attacks and said they were bracing for another rebel offensive on Monrovia.

But Chayee Doe, deputy president of the LURD, said: "We have no plans to attack the capital, but if they continue to attack us we will fight back."

The LURD launched its most audacious offensive on Monrovia last month, fighting its way to the heart of the city before pulling back to the edges ahead of the ceasefire.

Soon after the truce was inked, rebels and government forces accused each other of breaking the accord but the LURD later declared a unilateral ceasefire to prevent the already catastrophic humanitarian situation in Monrovia from worsening.

Tens of thousands of people who fled fighting between the rebels and government troops are living rough in Monrovia amid an acute shortage of food, drinking water, medicines and health facilities.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Monday began distributing food and other essentials to nearly 33,000 Liberians sheltered in a giant sports stadium in Monrovia.

"We are distributing 464,480 tonnes of food and household goods -- mats, casseroles, sheets, soap and cloth -- to 32,890 people housed in this stadium," Andre Mermillod from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

WAR.WIRE