I Coast polls 'impossible'
2004-11-22 23:16
London - Ivory Coast is incapable of staging elections which were called for under a now moribund peace deal signed less than two years ago, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said in a Financial Times interview published on Tuesday.
Wade, one of the regional sponsors of the January 2003 peace accord, said it was "impossible" to hold the polls in the west African country, convulsed by a new wave of unrest that has led to the mass exodus of foreigners and Ivorians from the west African country.
Wade said he had pitched a new peace plan to the African Union and leaders of France and the United States, in which a non-partisan "government of technocrats" would run the country for a three- to five-year transition period.
"My view is that the Ivorian political class has failed," Wade told the Financial Times.
He said there was no electoral register in Ivory Coast, which would be essential to stage a credible vote.
Latest unrest
African leaders are attempting to broker a political solution to the latest chapter of unrest to convulse Ivory Coast, which began on November 4 with a string of government air strikes on rebel positions in the north, violating an 18-month-old ceasefire.
By a rebel count, at least 85 civilians were killed in the strikes, one of which hit a French military base, killing nine French troops and a US aid worker.
An aggressive French retaliation, which wiped out the Ivorian air force, sent tens of thousands of Gbagbo supporters into a frenzy of looting and violence targeting mainly Europeans in the commercial capital Abidjan, prompting about 9 000 mostly French residents to flee.
Gbagbo blamed
Wade said the French peacekeeping presence was needed to avoid "total chaos and perhaps regional war" in the country, the world's top cocoa producer once considered an economic model for Africa.
The Senegalese president placed a great share of the blame for the "impasse" in Ivory Coast's peace process on its president, Laurent Gbagbo.
"Gbagbo does not want to and cannot apply (the deal)," he said.
The peace deal, brokered and signed in France, created a transitional government, which includes rebels and the political opposition, and disarmament process, and mandated an international force to keep the peace.
It also called on Gbagbo to cede some of his executive powers to a "consensus" prime minister.
But Gbagbo said shortly after endorsing the deal that it was intended merely as a set of proposals, and has refused to honour many of its conditions.
The rebels and opposition have on several occasions walked out of the transitional government, mainly to protest at Gbagbo's refusal to abide by the peace pact, and disarmament has been delayed repeatedly and is now seriously compromised by the resumption of violence.