Dear friends,

I am pleased to send you the Ouagadougou Declaration and the press release issued at the end of the Conference. Thank you for the interest expressed through outright support for our initiative, outright condemnation or through waiting to see. As you may appreciate in the results of the Conference, your concerns were taken into account at every stage.

We can now say that the meeting was a mighty success considering the level and quality of participation, especially from inside the country, and the level and quality of the debate. All major Liberian political parties and civil society organizations and the armed opposition, LURD were represented by their principal leaders from inside the country and from exile, thus making the meeting the most representative Liberian gathering within the current national context. ECOWAS and the International Republican Institute observed every session and the interest of the wider international community was manifested by the presence of representatives of major world powers at critical junctures of the conference and by the encouragement they gave. One key Ambassador even met with the leadership of the conference and with LURD to assure us of his government's support for whatever resulted from the Conference as Liberian position.

I want to particularly thank those who opposed the meeting; for they, in doing so, encouraged every delegate to become more rigorous. The critics helped raised the questions we demanded answers for before we accepted the offer of Ouagadougou as the venue. From every indication, that decision for Ouaga is turning out to be great. The fruits are beginning to become manifest in ways that some may not see now.

We now wish to invite everyone to join us work for the implementation of the Declaration for peace and democracy. Please promote this in whichever way you can. We must not undermine our own potentials by sleeping on the correctness of the positions we adopted prior to the conference.

My colleagues and I who were entrusted with the task of coordinating the implementation efforts count on you for all the support, bearing in mind that the Ouagadougou Declaration is the summation of all the great work that many of you may have involved yourselves in to save our motherland.

May God bless you all and save our country.

Sincerely yours,

Conmany B. Wesseh
Chairman, Coordinating Committee
Liberian Leadership Conference
Tel: (225) 22 411 421