I Coast peace process resumed

2006-01-23 13:33

Abidjan - The party of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo said on Monday it was rejoining the transitional government it had quit last week in a spat over a UN-backed peace group's call for parliament to step down.

The Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) said it had decided to resume the country's peace process and in consequence its ministers would be returning to the cross-party government of Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny.

The FPI claimed victory following four days of protests by Young Patriots, a pro- Gbagbo group, who erected barricades on the streets of Abidjan and tried to storm the headquarters of the United Nations peacekeeping force in Abidjan.

It rejected as an attack on national sovereignty the recommendation by the international working group for the dissolution of parliament, which the FPI dominates.

The UN-mandated group, which is overseeing Ivory Coast's shaky peace process had recommended the move because the parliament's official five-year term of office had expired in December 2005.

Divided

The international working group is trying, through Banny's government, to reunify the west African country, which has been divided since an abortive coup against Gbagbo in 2002, and stage elections by October this year.

Last weeks four-day protest was called off after Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, the current head of the African Union, flew to Abidjan for talks with Gbagbo and Banny amid hints by the UN that it could seek sanctions against Ivory Coast.

He declared afterwards that the working group had no power to dissolve parliament, had not done so and had no intention of doing so.

Gbagbo's term of office also ran out in October 2005, with no arrangements made for presidential elections. This was because both the president and the New Forces rebels, who are holding the north of the country, failed to comply with earlier peace accords.

The UN Security Council gave Gbagbo another year in office, but insisted on the naming of a new government under a prime minister acceptable to all sides to bring about disarmament, reconciliation and new polls.

- AFP