UN extends I Coast sanctions
2005-12-15 19:12
New York - The United Nations security council on Thursday extended for one year a sanctions regime for the Ivory Coast and broadened an embargo to cover diamonds in addition to arms.
The security council had previously banned arms exports to Ivory Coast and dangled the threat of sanctions against some individuals deemed an obstacle to peace.
The 15-member council unanimously passed the extension, which had been proposed by France.
The council reaffirmed its readiness to impose individual sanctions against any person "who blocks the implementation of the peace process, who is determined responsible for serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, who incites publicly hatred and violence, and who is determined to be in violation of the arms embargo".
Requests from the security council
The council called on all states to "take the necessary measures" to prevent the import of rough diamonds from Ivory Coast and urged African countries to join efforts to increase the effectiveness of monitoring of the Ivory Coast diamond trade.
It asked France, Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler, to communicate to the council "information gathered by French forces ...about the supply of arms and related materiel to C'te d'Ivoire and about the production and illicit export of diamonds".
Last month, member states of the UN-backed Kimberley Process, that aims to counter the trade in "conflict diamonds", voted to step up efforts to stop illicit diamond exports from Ivory Coast, thought to fund separatist rebels.
At a meeting in Moscow, members Kimberley Process, which includes 44 countries plus the European Union, "noted with grave concern the evidence that significant illicit production of diamonds is continuing" in northern Ivory Coast controlled by separatist forces.
Ivory Coast could have polls in 2006
The Kimberley Process was set up in South Africa in 2000 to establish a system of certifying rough diamonds in order to prevent them being used to fund conflict.
Thursday's resolution also asked UN chief Kofi Annan and France to "immediately" report to the security council "any serious obstacle to the freedom of movement" of the UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast and of French forces which support it.
Last week, the council welcomed the appointment of Charles Konan Banny as Ivory Coast's transitional prime minister and urged the rapid formation of a government to implement a roadmap to presidential polls next year.
Banny, the former governor of the West African Central Bank, was appointed on December 4 by the chief mediators in Ivory Coast's political crisis, presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, chairperson of the African Union, and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, has been split since fighting broke out in 2002 between President Laurent Gbagbo's government and rebels who control the mostly Muslim north.