I Coast wants Mbeki back

2005-03-16 20:36

Abidjan - President Thabo Mbeki is due in Ivory Coast "soon" to resume mediation in the west African state's simmering crisis, northern rebels said on Wednesday.

Rebel spokesperson Amadou Kone said they were informed of the visit, which has not been officially confirmed, by Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota after talks on Tuesday as part of South Africa's mediation efforts on behalf of the African Union to reconcile the world's top cocoa producer ahead of elections planned for October.

"We were told that President Mbeki was coming to Ivory Coast very soon," Kone told AFP by telephone from the central town of Bouake, the seat of the rebel fief since their uprising in September 2002 split the country in half.

"We do not know when, but we know it will be soon."

Tensions have been brewing in the former regional powerhouse since November when government planes violated an 18-month ceasefire with three days of strikes on rebel-held towns, sparking a wave of violence that culminated with anti-French riots in the main city Abidjan.

Maximum alert

In late February, an unknown militia claimed responsibility for a pre-dawn attack on another rebel-held town in the northwest, which humanitarian and diplomatic observers say was a "test balloon" for a future multi-front assault on the rebel zone.

The New Forces have placed their zone under maximum alert, accusing the national military of moving artillery and equipment closer to their side of the buffer zone splitting the country and patrolled by some 10 000 French and UN peacekeepers.

Mbeki's visit will come close to the one-year anniversary of a violent government crackdown on a banned opposition rally that left some 120 people dead according to a UN human rights investigation team.

It will also take place around the time that the year-long mandate of the 6 200-strong UN peacekeeping operation in Ivory Coast expires, though debate is already under way within the United Nations as to whether the mandate will be expanded and renewed.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, monitors of the flagging peace process asked parliament to review a sheaf of political reforms passed in December that have strayed from their original intention when they were envisioned under a January 2003 peace pact to end Ivory Coast's civil war.

Barred from voting

UN special envoy Alan Doss said the laws concerned were those which created an electoral commission and which dictated new terms for citizens and foreign residents in the country of 17 million, one quarter of whom are descended from economic migrants barred from voting or owning land.

Political finance laws and guidelines for audiovisual communication must also be reviewed, Doss said in a letter to parliament speaker Mamadou Coulibaly.

"Our objective is to move the peace and reconciliation process forward in Ivory Coast, to steer the country towards that which is essential - a consensual solution that will extricate the country from crisis," Doss said.

- AFP