"When you still have guns in the wrong hands in Ivory Coast, it is difficult to have a gun-free Liberia," Opande told AFP in an interview ahead of his departure from the west African country, which has a border with war-divided Ivory Coast.

Thousands of former combattants from three warring factions roam the streets of Liberia's cities, awaiting their promised incentive packages and reintegration benefits for having let go of their weapons.

Many wait in towns such as Zwedru and Harper, along the forested border shared by Liberia with its eastern neighbor, where rumors of stashed arms caches prey on the nascent peace taking root in Liberia after back to back civil wars since 1989.

Mounting tensions in Ivory Coast have stoked fears that the idle fighters could return to their warring ways on either side of the border, especially if they do not benefit from the promised reintegration benefits of schooling and vocational training and the chance at employment in the devastated country.

The release of some 93,000 people associated with the fighting factions back into civilian society has accompanied an explosion in petty crime in the capital and elsewhere around the west African nation, Africa's oldest independent republic.

Street violence in October in Monrovia claimed more than a dozen lives, while student protests and demonstrations outside the University of Liberia also left countless injured and inflicted heavy damage on buildings, vehicles and other school property.

A predilection for violence is only natural for a country that has been slammed by 14 years of civil war, waged by warlord turned president Charles Taylor whose despotic reign reverberated throughout the turbulent region.

"Liberia has turned itself upside down and inside out; the people have acquired a sense of violence among themselves," Opande said.

"The young people have this violent syndrome, practiced among themselves. This is very worrisome."

Without the full integration of Liberia's youth into civilian society, the country will never find peace, Opande said.

"I hope that the reintegration process will seriously address this issue," said the general.

"You cannot have a country where starting from the young ones to the old ones, people think that violence is the only way to solve problems."

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.