Mbeki to go back to I Coast

2004-11-20 17:11

Pretoria - President Thabo Mbeki, mandated by the African Union to help resolve the political crisis in Ivory Coast, said on Saturday he wanted to return to the war-wracked west African nation "very, very quickly".

"I want to be able to go back to the Ivory Coast very, very quickly," he said, adding that he planned to visit the northern rebel-held area of the divided nation as well.

Mbeki said earlier on Saturday his talks with Ivory Coast Prime Minister Seydou Diarra and the head of the west African country's rebel forces would focus on ensuring that existing peace accords were fully respected.

"We are continuing our consultations with the leadership of the Ivory Coast to see ... as to what needs to be done in order to implement the existing agreements," Mbeki told reporters in Pretoria before starting talks with Diarra, who was named prime minister by consensus under a French-brokered pact in January 2003.

Mbeki, mandated by the African Union to seek a solution to the crisis in the once-model West African state and the world's top cocoa producer, said the talks would "look at both the political and the military issues".

Mbeki was also to hold separate talks with Guillaume Soro, secretary general of the New Forces, the political arm of the country's rebel movement whose September 2002 uprising sliced the former star French colony in two.

Ivory Coast lurched back into crisis after the government launched air strikes on key towns in the north on November 4, in violation of an 18-month-old ceasefire.

- AFP