Liberia's main rebel faction threatened on Friday to fight any peacekeepers deployed before President Charles Taylor steps down, casting a cloud over plans to send West African and possibly US troops into the country.

A US soldier is greeted by Liberian children in Monrovia July 8, 2003. President Bush will be ready to decide within days whether to send US troops in to Liberia, a senior US official said July 10 as momentum grew to rapidly send in a US-backed West African force. [Reuters]

The statement by Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) came as President Bush considered whether to send US soldiers with a regional force.

Bush has come under increasing pressure to intervene militarily to stop the growing humanitarian disaster in a country founded by freed American slaves in the 19th century.

A UN agency warned on Friday that hundreds of thousands of displaced people in camps outside Monrovia could face starvation if a peaceful solution was not reached immediately.

LURD rebels said the deployment of international troops before the departure of Taylor, who has been indicted for war crimes and told to step down by Bush, would prop up the former warlord and arch-survivor.

"While we hope for the best, we are braced for the worst; therefore any troops deployed before the departure of Taylor must be prepared for a firefight," the LURD statement said, adding that such a deployment would be "preposterous and unacceptable."

Bush, who is touring Africa, is expected to decide within days on whether American troops should join a regional force.

Washington is wary after the humiliating and bloody retreat of US forces from Somalia 10 years ago. The US army is already stretched by complex and costly operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Liberia has little strategic importance.

Taylor has promised to step down and accepted an offer of asylum in Nigeria, but he says he wants the international force in place first to avert chaos.

REGIONAL FORCE TAKES SHAPE

Foreign troops have been sucked into West Africa's brutal wars before. British soldiers in Sierra Leone and French troops in Ivory Coast have both had to confront -- and sometimes kill -- drunken, drugged-up fighters during missions to end wars.

Liberia has been crippled by 14 years of almost non-stop war that has poisoned the region, left hundreds of thousands displaced and hammered the economy into the ground.

LURD started its rebellion in 2000 and with a second faction, known as Model, now controls around 60 percent of Liberia. Its fighters struck into Monrovia twice last month, leaving hundreds dead and sending thousands fleeing.

Arnold Vercken of the U.N.'s World Food Program told reporters in Rome that more than 100,000 displaced people were living in camps in Monrovia's northern suburbs.

"Our trucks are loaded and ready to go but we have no guarantees of security," Vercken said. "These people are in no-man's-land. We just can't reach them," he said.

Nigeria has said West Africa could quickly deploy an initial force of 1,000 to 1,500 troops in about two weeks. US officials have said any US role would be "very limited" and mainly concerned with supporting regional troops.

Many Liberians think only US troops will be able to impose control over the volatile fighters on both sides. During a civil war which cost 200,000 lives in the 1990s, a Nigerian-led force failed to stop some of the worst episodes of killing.

Nigeria has no treaty under which Taylor could be extradited to face the U.N.-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone.

Ghana's President John Kufuor, who is also head of West Africa's ECOWAS bloc, said the asylum offer was a compromise to save lives, but did not give Taylor indefinite impunity.

Kufuor also said he hoped an initial ECOWAS force would land in Monrovia by about July 20.

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