rebuild as it prepares for elections in October.

The UN’s 15,000 peacekeepers were placed on alert and security tightened at the parliament building as the 76-member chamber voted to replace Dweh, who has protested against his removal.

Last week as parliamentarians debated whether to suspend the speaker, two men, apparently his bodyguards, broke into the building and tried to grab papers relating to the graft probe. They were hauled away after a scuffle with UN peacekeepers and police.

Dweh, a founder of the former main rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), was replaced on Thursday by George Koukou, once a member of the regime led by exiled leader Charles Taylor. Civilian representative and lawyer David Gbala was chosen as his deputy.

The assembly brushed aside Dweh’s protests, saying hisissued in the Nigerian capital Abuja, ECOWAS called on all Liberians " to desist from taking the law into their own hands" and said a team of its investigators and auditors would look into corruption claims.

"At the end of their work, those who are found culpable will be sanctioned without fear or favour," it said. ECOWAS officials declined comment on the nature of the sanctions.

ECOWAS also said the ICGL, made up of Western and African diplomats, would meet in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, on Monday to discuss the graft crisis.

This week's suspensions came almost a month after a World Bank team visited the timber-rich West African country and told the transitional leadership to crack down harder on corruption and make its books more transparent if it wanted to