Rebel leader wants trust
2005-01-23 20:51
Abidjan - Disarmament cannot be achieved in Ivory Coast without an "environment of trust," rebel leader Guillaume Soro said on Sunday before leaving for South Africa for mediation talks on the west African country's conflict.
"There must be an environment of trust" assured by the international community in order for disarmament to begin in Ivory Coast, Soro told a news conference.
He is to have talks with with South African President Thabo Mbeki, the African Union's mediator in the divided country, appointed two months ago.
"After the difficulties that the peace process is seeing today, President Thabo Mbeki wanted to meet with the New Forces to hear us," he said in the central Ivorian rebel stronghold, Bouake, according to a statement also sent to AFP.
Soro said that even more important than disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration is the "context (in which) this process can begin. ... A certain number of preconditions need to be in place."
He added: "There must be an environment of trust. You cannot disarm amid mistrust, even less amid defiance."
Soro also said disarmament must be "concomitant: that is, the second when one cartridge is laid down by the New Forces, the same cartridge must be laid down by the (government forces)".
The rebel leader called on the international community to "make a manifest demonstration that it has the means to end the war, to see to it that the war is irreversible in Ivory Coast."
Mbeki is to meet separately with Soro and opposition figure Alassane Ouattara, who was barred from running against President Laurent Gbagbo in presidential elections five years ago.
The meetings come two years after the signing of a French-brokered agreement designed to restore peace to Ivory Coast but so far unsuccessful.
The country, the world's top cocoa producer and once a beacon of stability in west Africa, has been split since September 2002, when a military mutiny failed to topple Gbagbo but the rebels gained control of the northern half.