JACKSON URGES U.S. HELP FOR LIBERIA

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - U.S. troops should be sent to Liberia as part of a
multinational peacekeeping force to help restore order to the war-torn west
African nation, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said Thursday.

The Bush administration also must do more to help beleaguered African
nations than provide funds to stem the spread of AIDS, Jackson said on the
last day of the NAACP convention on Miami Beach.

"Africa doesn't need just AIDS support, it needs aid support and trade
support," Jackson said.

President Bush has pledged $15 billion in medical and educational relief to
several African nations facing an AIDS epidemic. Last week, Bush visited
five African countries to publicize the aid package.

Jackson also accused the U.S. government of helping create Liberia's
instability by supporting a 1980 coup by U.S.-backed strongman Samuel Doe
that ousted President William Tolbert. Doe was elected president five years
later in a contested election.

"We betrayed Liberia, and undercut the democracy," said Jackson, a special
U.S. envoy to Africa under former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

In 1990, current President Charles Taylor overthrew Doe, triggering years
of conflict in which an estimated 250,000 civilians have died.

Jackson said the United States should join the United Nations in
negotiations for Taylor to step down "with a no-return clause."

"We negotiated Idi Amin out of Uganda and Pinochet out of Chile," Jackson
said in a telephone interview later Thursday. "Sometimes negotiating a
tyrant out without the right of return is the way to negotiate."

On Thursday, NAACP delegates approved an emergency resolution urging the
United States to provide humanitarian and military assistance to Liberia.

The vote heartened Tog Ba R. Porte, a Liberian national who lives in New
York City. He said he longed to see order restored in his native land and
said true peace will only come when ordinary Liberians, not warlords,
decide the nation's future.

"Since 1980, the country has been led by factions. Nothing positive has
been done since then," Porte said. "The leadership should be from the
masses, not the warlords."

Although Jackson's speech was billed as focusing on U.S.-Africa policy, he
primarily delivered a rousing sermon exhorting the NAACP to focus again on
the South, where the civil-rights movement had its greatest victories.

Black Americans, he said, still face discrimination in business, banking
and the justice system.

"We're coming South. We can't win unless we regain the South," he said.

He said he would participate in a demonstration Friday in Montgomery, Ala.,
to protest Gov. Bob Riley's veto of a bill that would automatically have
restored voting rights to felons who have completed their prison sentences.

Jackson also took swipes at state and federal drug-sentencing laws.

"You tell me someone who got caught with marijuana and crack cannot get
their rights back?" Jackson said. "Unless you're Gov. Jeb Bush's daughter."

Noelle Bush, the governor's daughter, was ordered to attend drug treatment
after she was arrested in 2002 for allegedly trying to use a fake
prescription to buy the anti-anxiety drug Xanax.

Eight months later, she reportedly was found with a piece of crack cocaine
in her shoe while at an Orlando treatment center. In October, a judge
sentenced her to 10 days in jail. She remains in drug treatment.

Jackson's comment first drew gasps, then loud applause.

"Noelle Bush should not be in jail today. But our daughters should not be
in jail either," he said.