Charles Taylor, Liberia's warlord president, finally stepped down today, prompting one rebel group to declare the country's war over.

Mr Taylor resigned a tense two and half hours after the time he had appointed - 11.59GMT today. He had been delayed at the airport, where he was welcoming dignitaries including the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, and the Ghanaian president, John Kufuor, to the handing-over ceremony.

He eventually ceded power to his vice president, Moses Blah, at 2.30GMT (3.30BST).

Sekou Fofana, a rebel leader of Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), immediately promised an end to fighting if Mr Taylor now left the country as planned. Mr Taylor has accepted an offer of asylum from Nigeria.

"For us in Lurd, the war is over. Once he leaves Liberia today we are not going to fight. The suffering of Liberians is over," Mr Fofana said.

Dressed in a white safari suit and holding his trademark staff, Mr Taylor - who plunged Liberia into 14 years of war with a 1989 insurgency - said that history would forgive him.

"History will be kind to me. I have fulfilled my duties," he said, adding: "I have accepted this role as the sacrificial lamb ... I am the whipping boy."

Mr Taylor looked on as Mr Blah was sworn in. Placing his left hand on the bible and raising his right, Mr Blah pledged to "faithfully, conscientiously and impartially discharge the duties and functions of the Republic of Liberia".

Mr Blah began his presidency with a moment of silence for all those have died in Liberia's wars.

"Let the nation begin to heal," he said. "Let all of us unite as one people and work to peace." Mr Kufuor announced that Mr Blah will remain in power until the second Tuesday in October.

"Moses Blah, then president, will hand over power to the leadership of the national transitional government of Liberia, which will have been negotiated and appointed at the Accra conference over the next few weeks," Mr Kufuor said.

Liberian politicians have been meeting in Ghana's capital, Accra, to try to negotiate a comprehensive peace deal.

Mr Blah today waited with Liberian and regional officials for Mr Taylor to arrive at a velvet-draped room in his heavily-guarded mansion which, like the rest of the capital, Monrovia, is without electricity.

Outside, Monrovia's beleaguered people cheered Nigerian peacekeepers, part of a vanguard peace force of west African soldiers that is eventually meant to include 3,250 troops.

However, they refrained from celebrating the former warlord's resignation until it was official.

"I can hardly believe it. He has brought too much suffering on the Liberian people," Henry Philips, a 38-year-old former security official, said. "His absence is better than his presence."

Many of the undisciplined, often-drugged government fighters who had previously patrolled the area appeared to have slipped away into the city with their weapons.

Rebels have rejected Mr Taylor's choice of Mr Blah, who is a long-time ally and comrade in arms, as successor, and demanded that a neutral candidate be chosen to preside over a transition government until elections can be held.

Today, pickup trucks full of armed rebels raced toward the front as insurgents threatened to resume fighting if Mr Taylor stays in the country after stepping down from power.

The Nigerian president, Olusegun Obasanjo, was not attending Mr Taylor's resignation, but sent his foreign minister. Aides said that Mr Taylor was expected in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, today.

Two months of intermittent rebel sieges have left over 1,000 civilians in Monrovia dead as government and insurgent forces duel, with the city, which has a population of 1.3 million, as their battlefield.

The war has left Mr Taylor's government controlling little but downtown, which rebels derisively refer to as Taylor's "federal republic of central Monrovia".

Under mounting pressure from the US and west African, nations, Mr Taylor promised to leave power today.

However, he remained defiant in a farewell address to the nation yesterday, declaring himself "the sacrificial lamb" to end what he said was a US-backed rebel war against his besieged regime.

He called the uprising an "American war" and suggested that it was motivated by US eagerness for Liberia's gold, diamonds and other reserves.

"They can call off their dogs now," Mr Taylor said of the alleged US support of Lurd. "We can have peace."

Mr Taylor was elected president in 1997, on threats of plunging the country into renewed bloodshed. Rebels, including some of Mr Taylor's rivals from the previous war, took up arms against him two years later.

Rights groups and Liberia's people accuse Mr Taylor's ragtag forces of routine rape, robbery, torture, forced labour and summary killing. Rebels, to a lesser extent so far, are likewise accused of abuse.