MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) – Nigeria’s president will come to meet Liberia’s embattled leader, Charles Taylor, to discuss giving him temporary asylum, a senior Liberian official said Saturday.

President Taylor – wanted on war crimes charges and cornered by rebels in his final redoubt, Monrovia – is under a torrent of pressure to quit power, including from President Bush.

Taylor, who has backed off similar promises in the past, says he will leave, but only after an international peacekeeping force deploys in Liberia.

Nigerian President Olesugun Obasango – whose country is the region’s military and diplomatic heavyweight and Africa’s most-populous nation – will arrive Sunday for an airport meeting with Taylor, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Obasanjo’s administration said earlier it would be willing to harbor Taylor until he travels to a third country for permanent exile. Nigerian officials weren’t immediately available for comment.

On Friday, a West African regional bloc said it would put up 3,000 troops for an intervention force to stabilize the country.

Liberians, Taylor, and leaders from many countries have called for the United States to send troops to lead the force in Liberia, founded in the 19th century by freed American slaves.

In Washington, the Bush administration said Friday an advance team would travel to Africa to gather facts on how the United States might contribute to the force, while warning a decision won’t necessarily come before Bush leaves on Monday for a five-nation African tour. Bush isn’t scheduled to visit Liberia.

In Monrovia, where hundreds died during two rebel pushes into the city last month, street traders, shop owners and many among the 97,000 refugees swelling the city glued their ears to transistor radios on Saturday in hopes of a Bush pronouncement on their plight.

In Ghana, peace talks among Liberia’s warring parties and political groupings continued on Saturday. Negotiators are hammering out details for an eventual transitional government, which must exclude Taylor, according to an oft-violated June 17 cease-fire deal.

While Taylor was in Ghana to open the talks on June 4, a U.N.-backed war crimes court in neighboring Sierra Leone indicted him for gun trafficking and supporting Sierra Leone rebels during their vicious 10-year terror campaign, when atrocities included hacking off victims’ limbs. Taylor cut short his Ghana visit and flew home an international fugitive.

Taylor started Liberia’s bloodshed by launching a 1989-1996 civil war and was elected president in 1997. Since Liberia’s main rebel movement took up arms against him in 1999, one-third of this country’s 3 million people have been forced from their homes by fighting.

AP-ES-07-05-03 0936EDT