Mr Taylor, known as “Pappy” to thousands of former child soldiers in West Africa, has not been seen since Saturday, when Nigeria, where he has lived in exile since 2003, said that Liberia was free to take him into custody. However, it gave no details of how that might be done.

Nigeria gave its formal response to an extradition request by Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the newly elected leader of Liberia, but has made clear that it would give no assistance in detaining him. Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf, the first elected woman leader in Africa, angered President Obasanjo of Nigeria, who prides himself on being West Africa’s “Big Man”, by bringing the matter up directly with President Bush during a recent visit to Washington.

“Taylor is not a prisoner here . . . our job is done,” Remi Oyo, the Nigerian President’s spokeswoman, said. She also denied that Nigeria had received requests from war crimes prosecutors for Mr Taylor to be detained. “We read of the request in the papers, but it has not arrived here,” she added.

Liberia said yesterday that it was baffled by the Nigerian position. Johnny McClain, the Liberian Information Minister, said: “How do you go and arrest a former president in a foreign country . . . also, there is no extradition treaty between Liberia and Nigeria.”

The UN war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone holds Mr Taylor responsible for about 250,000 deaths. Throughout the 1990s, his armies and supporters, made up of child soldiers orphaned by the conflicts, wreaked havoc through a swath of West Africa. In Sierra Leone he supported the Revolutionary United Front, whose rebel fighters were notorious for hacking off the limbs of civilians.

The issue is further complicated because Liberia does not want him on its territory for fear that it could threaten the country’s fragile stability.

“Mr Taylor was not indicted by a Liberian court and, therefore, he is not needed by a Liberian court,” Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf said. She emphasised that Liberia wanted him to go directly to the court in Sierra Leone without passing through his native country.

Mr Taylor was given asylum in Nigeria as part of a deal to end Liberia’s 14-year civil war. Mr Obasanjo personally persuaded him to step down, and flew with him to Nigeria, where he reportedly assured him that he would be secure. Since then, Mr Taylor has lived in relative luxury in a private villa in the coastal town of Calabar.

Soon after his arrival, however, he was indicted on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the UN-backed war crimes tribunal, which issued an international warrant for his arrest.

Mr Taylor, who used the conflicts to gain access to the region’s rich diamond and logging areas, has a huge fortune. He used it to win internationally supervised elections under a regional peace deal in the mid-1990s. His slogan, “I killed your Mama, I killed your Papa”, was intended to remind waverers of what a return to war could mean.

It worked, but his peacetime rule sparked more rebellions and, by 2003, he had lost control of all but Monrovia, the ruined Liberian capital.

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