I Coast rebels to meet Mbeki
2004-12-16 12:06
Johannesburg - An Ivory Coast rebel delegation is due on Thursday to unveil proposals for a new draft peace plan in talks with President Thabo Mbeki, the latest mediator in the west African country's two-year civil crisis.
"We are meeting with President Mbeki at the presidential guesthouse at 14:00" Sidike Konate, a member of the New Forces - as the rebels are now called - told AFP from his hotel in Pretoria.
"We will be discussing our proposals for a peace plan," he added.
The meeting with Mbeki will be the rebels' third since early November, when the African Union named the South African leader as its mediator in the Ivory Coast crisis after Ivorian government planes bombed key positions in the rebel-held north, shattering an 18-month-old ceasefire.
The team, led by Louis Dacoury-Tabley, deputy chief of the rebel New Forces, will present Mbeki with a plan devised during a weekend of meetings in their central stronghold of Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city.
They have described their goal as "a durable peace born from free, fair and accessible elections."
Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer and once the jewel in the French colonial empire in Africa, was a haven of peace and prosperity until a military coup in December 1999, followed by a rebellion in September 2002.
The 2002 uprising sliced the country in half and was aimed at toppling President Laurent Gbagbo, who the rebels said was marginalising the country's Muslim-dominated north.
A French-brokered peace, called the Marcoussis accord, was signed in January 2003.
But the pact has essentially been voided by months of political infighting and sporadic violence, most recently in early November when a string of government air strikes on the rebel-held north reportedly claimed 85 lives.