Alan Doss Quotations

We have to give the new government, initially, the benefit of the doubt. Help them get moving quickly so people see a difference. If a few years from now they sense that nothing has changed . . . there could be trouble again.

When you demobilize tens of thousands of young men, if they don't have any hope then you create all the ingredients for a future explosion if you're not careful,

Liberia has been the epicenter of progressive waves of instability that have swept through this region over the past 25 years,

Right now, Liberia is a country on life support. But this is the best opportunity it has had for decades.

Right now, Liberia is a country on life support,

Today is a day of hope, a day of optimism.

remain on full alert throughout the country to ensure a secured environment.

We hope that the current calm and stability will gradually install itself throughout the country.

We hope that as we process the votes, you will all wait for the outcome of this election with a spirit of unity, and that we all guard the peace we have enjoyed throughout this process.

We haven't had the long queues we had before, but that may be in part because the procedure was simpler ... just two candidates.

We are doing and will continue to do cordon and search operations based on intelligence tip-offs where we go and raid premises to recover any hidden caches,

While we do not know which candidates will be chosen as the newly elected leaders of a democratically elected government of Liberia, we do know that today Liberians voted, cast their ballots for peace and for a new Liberia,

while we do not know this evening which of the two candidates will be chosen as the newly elected leader of Liberia, we do know that today, Liberian voters haven taken a major step towards rebuilding their nation.

Considerable assistance from donors, including debt relief, will be needed in the early years. That is inevitable because there are things that government needs to do: infrastructure has to be built, and so on.

The United States has made a start here, training the army, but this goes beyond one partner and I hope others will come in,

Poverty is pervasive, the productive base of the economy has been destroyed. None of that can be fixed with the best will in the world in a few months,

offered the people of Liberia an opportunity to leave behind the conflict that has devastated this country for so long and turned the page on a very dark chapter in their history.

The next two years will be critical for Liberia.

The observer mission has termed the elections free and fair. Party representatives were present in, I believe, just about every polling station and they signed off on the records.

Economic hope I think is crucial. There is a window of opportunity here, but that would not last forever.

I hope it will be resolved in a peaceful manner.

The Liberian people have made their choice through the ballot today, and we are all obliged to respect the choice made by the men and women of this nation,

The greatest danger now is that expectations are too high. The euphoria of the end of the conflict will soon be forgotten.