MONROVIA, Liberia ? Charles Taylor’s forces battled Tuesday to retake key cities recently captured by rebels in fighting that had the Liberian warlord-turned-president threatening to hang onto power despite his pledge to resign.

Aid workers tending to emaciated babies in Monrovia said the new combat cut the starving capital’s last aid lifeline. Desperate refugees, crossing paths as they fled one embattled Liberian city for another, said there was no place to turn.

“All over, fighting now,” said Hadija Kabah, 54, caring for more than a dozen children and grandchildren at a makeshift camp outside Monrovia. “There’s no place safe to go in Liberia.”

Arguments over funding are believed to be delaying deployment of a peace mission, pledged by West African nations with assurances of U.S. and other international assistance.

Nigeria, West Africa’s military power, has offered two battalions but says it needs help with what it expects to be a multimillion-dollar daily tab. Asked after meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair in London when peacekeeping troops might go in, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told reporters, “a few days.”

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, eager to see peacekeepers in place, said in New York that a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone could transport one Nigerian battalion and, with Security Council approval, could provide support for two battalions for a limited period.

Holed up in the capital, Taylor’s government reacted angrily to the spread of fighting to new fronts outside the city. A spokesman said the attacks had made Taylor rethink ceding power, a pledge Taylor has made — and repeatedly broken or hedged — since the rebel siege began in June.

The rebels read Taylor’s pledge to step down “as weakness,” Taylor spokesman Vaanii Paasawe said. “In fact, it has escalated the war.”

“We are of a different opinion now in the government about the validity of the overtures of the president to step down,” the Taylor spokesman said. “So if you start hearing differently, you shouldn’t be surprised.”