Gyude Bryant was sworn in today as the head of Liberia's transitional government, charged with leading the country out of 14 years of war and into democratic elections.
Mr Bryant, 54, will serve a two-year term as chairman - not president - of the transitional power-sharing government.
Liberia's warring factions chose Mr Bryant, a businessman regarded as politically neutral, as leader in August during the peace talks that followed warlord president Charles Taylor's exile. Mr Bryant takes over from Moses Blah, Mr Taylor's deputy, who served as the temporary head of government for the past two months.
Mr Taylor, widely blamed for the violence that engulfed Liberia for the last 14 years, flew into exile in Nigeria on August 11.
Mr Bryant today took an oath before West African leaders and Liberians in the capitol rotunda of bullet-riddled Monrovia.
Wearing a black suit, he placed his left hand on a bible held by his wife, and swore to "faithfully, conscientiously and impartially discharge the duties of the office of chairman of the national transitional government, to the best of my ability, so help me God."
West African leaders, some of whom just two months ago had ushered Taylor into exile out of his rebel-besieged capital, looked on.
"Liberia needs to be pulled up by all of us," the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, told the inauguration audience of heavily guarded rebel leaders, figures of Taylor's toppled government, and international diplomats.
"You have the support of all of us in West Africa," he told the Liberians, many of who will have stakes in Mr Bryant's power-sharing government. "If there's no peace in Liberia, there's no peace in West Africa."
Mr Bryant faces enormous challenges in preparing his country for elections in 2005.
He will have to disarm thousands of young fighters inured to murder, rape and pillage. His government will also have to encourage hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians to return home. More than 200,000 people have perished during fighting since 1989. In the two and a half months before Mr Taylor's exit, sieges in the capital killed more than 1,000 civilians.
Mr Bryant is a long-time campaigner against warlords who stayed in Liberia throughout years of fighting under Mr Taylor. Liberians cheered his return to Monrovia yesterday, brought back by a Ghana air force jet for the first time since Mr Taylor left.
Two months earlier, on August 11, leaders from across Africa had assembled to see Mr Taylor into exile, giving him the ceremonial send-off he had demanded as a condition of yielding power. Rebels and the government signed a peace deal one week after Mr Taylor's departure, on August 18, setting up Mr Bryant's tenure.
In a statement released today from Nigeria, Mr Taylor rejected accusations from the UN that he continued to meddle in politics in Liberia and gave assurances that he was behind Mr Bryant.
"I pledge my all to peace and the peace-building process now unfolding in Liberia," he said. "This is my native land where I have to return one day, live, die and be buried."
"Peace is all we need," slogans on placards held by women lining the streets outside the inauguration ceremony declared today, before a cordon of white UN armoured personnel carriers.
Inside, UN troops enforced massive security. As Mr Bryant, rebel leaders and government officials arrived, blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers flanked each with AK-47s and rocket-launchers. The UN military mission moved in earlier this month, replacing an emergency 3,500-strong peace force of African troops that had been led by Mr Obasanjo's Nigerian forces.
Mr Obasanjo, seen as one of the most crucial of many African leaders engineering the end of Mr Taylor's devastating tenure, drew the loudest cheers at today's ceremony.
A heavy-equipment dealer and leader of a small political party, Mr Bryant led a 1997 effort to unite political parties behind a civilian candidate in Liberia's first elections after a 1989-1996 civil war. The six-party alliance's effort failed, and Mr Taylor won the presidency.