Lekota off on peace mission
2005-03-04 21:29
Johannesburg - Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota will visit conflict-torn Ivory Coast with international lawyers next week to discuss legal changes provided in a roadmap for peace chalked out by President Thabo Mbeki, said his spokesperson Bheki Khumalo on Friday.
Khumalo said: "Minister Lekota will go to Abidjan next week along with a judge from Burundi's constitutional court, a lawyer from Rwanda and President Mbeki's legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi to look at legal issues identified in the roadmap."
Khumalo evaded answering a question on whether the team would examine the highly contentious Article 35 of the Ivorian constitution, which bars anyone with foreign parents from contesting elections.
Ivory Coast, which had been sliced in two since a September 2002 rebellion against the regime of President Laurent Gbagbo, is due to hold elections in October.
Govt planes bombards rebel
But, main opposition leader and former prime minister Alassane Ouattara - who was barred from the last presidential elections on the ground that he was not 100% Ivorian and was living in self-imposed exile in France - is insisting that the law should be scrapped.
The low-level civil conflict in Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, intensified on Monday after weeks when pro-government militants attacked a rebel-held town in the restive west.
This was the first major clash since government planes bombarded rebel positions for three days in November, killing 85 civilians.
Several African leaders, including the late Togolese president Gnassingbe Eyadema and John Kufuor of Ghana, had earlier tried to mediate an end to the Ivorian crisis.
The African Union in November appointed Mbeki, seen as neutral to the conflict, to try to broker a solution.
Mbeki submitted a five-point roadmap or peace blueprint during a peace mission to Ivory Coast in December.
It provided for disarmament and restoring a power-sharing government among other issues.