According to Vice President Boakai, steps in conflict prevention should include the elimination of poverty, provision of opportunities for the success of citizens and the creation of the environment for advancement.

Vice President Boakai stressed that states have as a responsibility to promote the rule of law, respect for all, peaceful coexistence in diversity and other measures to prevent conflict, adding, “conflict situations must be diffused to avoid reaching crises proportions,” a dispatch from Istanbul, Turkey said.

Vice President Boakai made the call Monday in Istanbul during a High Level Leaders Roundtable held under the theme: Political Leadership to end and Prevent Conflict moderated by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon.

Co-Chairs of the Roundtable included, the President of the Republic Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; Vice President Joseph N. Boakai of Liberia; Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Head of Government of the Republic of Tunisia, Habib Essid, the dispatch from Istanbul added.

Speaking further, Vice President Boakai cited marginalization and the inequitable distribution of wealth of the nation as causes of the prolonged civil war that engulfed the Liberian nation and praised the international community for helping Liberia return to peace.

He recalled the statement of the U. N. Secretary General at the opening of the Humanitarian Summit in which he said that the summit “must be the beginning of a new era of international solidarity to halt the terrible suffering of people affected by conflict and disaster and who are depending on us.”

Touching on mechanisms that the Economic Community of West African States is putting into place to detect conflict, Vice President Boakai told the delegates that the sub-region is far in a sub-regional effort to establish the National Center for the Coordination of the Response Mechanism known as the ECOWAS Early Warning Center, and commended the Government of the United States for its support to the project.

He also called on other members of the international community to lend support to the project.

Hundreds of journalists have descended on Istanbul to cover the summit, according to the dispatch.
LINA PR/TSS/PTK