West African peacekeepers on Thursday halted a weapons shipment that arrived on a jet belonging to a Ghana-based airline at Robertsfield Airport, now the base of the ECOMIL regional peacekeeping force.

Defence Minister Daniel Chea rold AFP that Taylor's forces were still fighting the MODEL rebel group around the port town of Buchanan, 100 kilometres (62 miles) southeast of Monrovia, despite a ceasefire in the capital.

"As the government we have a right to defend ourselves. That is why I wanted to deploy additional arms and ammunition in Buchanan-Tapeta corridor," he said, confirming that the shipment had been left in ECOMIL's hands.

"ECOMIL were able to convince us against deploying additional equipment in the field," he said.

Liberia, which has seen a string of bloody civil wars over the past 12 years, is under a UN arms embargo. Taylor's government has long opposed the ban, claiming it has prevented them from fighting two rebel movements.

The first elements of a Nigerian-led ECOMIL west African force arrived in Liberia at the weekend and have begun to patrol Monrovia, where a shaky ceasefire between Taylor's forces and the LURD rebel group is in place.

But Chea warned that ECOMIL "will not be strong enough for several months to deploy to the whole country." He claimed the government was still under attack from MODEL, Liberia's second largest rebel group.

"This is a big test for ECOMIL. We accepted their assurances in good faith." he said.

The surprise discovery of the weapons shipment, which is widely believed in Monrovia to have come from Taylor's Libyan allies, raised fears that the former warlord Taylor might be planning a dramatic counterattack.

But the embattled leader insisted that he still plans to resign his post on Monday and to go into exile in Nigeria shortly afterwards.

WAR.WIRE