MONROVIA, Jan. 6 (Xinhuanet) -- More than 3,000 widows of the dead Liberian soldiers who took to the streets on Friday in demand of their husbands' benefits have begun removing road blocks in the streets of the capital Monrovia, following the intervention of president-elect Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

    Johnson-Sirleaf who is due to take office on January 16 met with widows and assured them that they would begin receiving their husbands' benefit Saturday, beginning with those widows who have already processed their identification cards.

    Others were told to do likewise to benefit from the 20,000 Liberian dollars (about 400 U.S. dollars) per person package.

    The women were protesting what they termed as "government's delay" in paying them benefits of their deceased husbands killed in the west African country's bloody 14-year civil war that ended in 2003.

    "The government has been pushing us around for too long and we fed up," one of the protesting women said earlier.

    Liberia's Defense Minister Daniel Chea told Xinhua that the decision to pay the widows was a political one taken by the government because such arrangement was never part of the restructuring exercise of the army.

    "The widows were not part of the demobilization and restructuring exercise of the army," Chea said. "We hope the government would find a way to settle the problem," he added.

    Liberia's Justice Minister Kabina Janeh acknowledged that the government had accepted to pay the widows, but he said resources were "not available" to settle all of the more than 3,000 widows at once.

    Janeh said the women were demanding to be settled at once, but government could only afford to settle them in batches of 50 women per week at 20,000 Liberia dollars per woman. Enditem