In Liberia French special forces airlifted hundreds of foreigners to safety today as rebels advanced closer to the centre of the capital, Monrovia.
The expatriates, many of them aid workers, were taken to a naval vessel waiting off the coast.
Ghana has meanwhile sent a navy ship and three airforce planes to evacuate its nationals as fighting between rebels and government forces intensifies.
In Ghana, the rebels met with a government delegation for informal talks, but mediators from the West African body ECOWAS said proper negotiations were unlikely to get under way until Wednesday.
LURD and another rebel faction known as Model control around two thirds of Liberia, a country of three million people.
In New York the United Nations Security Council met to discuss the crisis, after the Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed alarm at the fate of one million people in Monrovia.
