Ivory Coast election pledge
2006-12-16 09:21
Abidjan - Ivory Coast's President Laurent
Gbagbo on Friday vowed to do everything possible to ensure
long-delayed presidential polls take place next year in the
war-divided West African country.
The former French colony has been split into a rebel-held
north and government south since a 2002-2003 civil war. A
string of UN-backed peace deals has made little progress
reuniting the country as the foes bicker over their
implementation.
"I make the vow before you that I will do everything to
ensure elections take place in the year to come so that we can
at least have a true government," Gbagbo told young supporters
at a meeting in the main city Abidjan.
Gbagbo's constitutional five-year mandate expired in
October 2005 but elections scheduled for then failed to take
place. A second deadline in October this year was also missed.
Gbagbo has been kept on under the latest UN-backed peace
plan, flanked by consensus prime minister Charles Konan Banny,
who is tasked with organising polls and overseeing
disarmament.
Around 11 000 UN and French peacekeepers police the
buffer zone that cuts the world's top cocoa grower in half. The
UN Security Council on Friday extended the peacekeepers'
mandate for just about a month, until January 10, after the United
States said it would take a few weeks to obtain congressional
approval for a longer renewal.
In preparation for polls and to address a key grievance of
the rebels, who say the war was born out of discrimination
against mainly Muslim northerners, a scheme to provide people
with identity papers is set to resume Monday.
An estimated 3.5 million people born but never registered
in the country will be entitled to identity papers and eligible
Ivorian nationals among them will later be able to register to
vote in elections.