I Coast: UN backs Mbeki
2005-08-16 22:00
Pretoria - Two top United Nations officials for war-ravaged Ivory Coast on Tuesday backed President Thabo Mbeki's mediation and warned against any attempts to disrupt presidential polls set for October.
The support for Mbeki came after two main opposition parties in Ivory Coast accused the South African peace broker of being partisan and favouring President Laurent Gbagbo, whose country had been sliced into two regions since a rebel uprising in September 2002.
After talks with Mbeki, Pierre Schori, UN secretary general Kofi Annan's special representative in Ivory Coast, said: "We had a very good meeting and we both said there is a strong need to move ahead... the important thing is that the train must start moving.
"We have full faith in President Mbeki," who was sent by the African Union to mediate the conflict.
Blocking the elections
Schori was speaking on behalf of himself and recently appointed UN elections monitor, Antonio Monteiro.
He said: "There should absolutely be no pretext for blocking the elections or the peace process."
Schori also warned that "both the mediation and the UN are powerful allies and guarantors who read from the same script."
He said the UN was "assessing things on a daily basis and sending back reports," adding that sanctions could be imposed on "anyone who obstructs the peace process, anyone who flouts human rights, anyone who uses hate language or anyone breaking the arms embargo".
Mbeki's meeting with Schori and Monteiro came after Ivorian opposition groups questioned the SA leader's credentials after he vetted some poll decrees issued by Gbagbo in the middle of last month.
Gbabgo in those decrees entrusted the National Institute of Statistics with the power for determining eligibility to vote, establishing lists and issuing electors' cards, instead of the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) due to be set up for the presidential polls.
Institute of statistics
The opposition said that the role attributed to the commission - that of responsibility for the electoral process, with the institute of statistics telling it what it had done, stripped the commission of any real effectiveness.
Originally, under the agreement between the government and opposition, the CEI was given a larger role as the only body responsible for the electoral process with the institute confined to an advisory role.
Schori said the need of the hour was "immediate regroupment as a precursor to disarmament (in the rebel-held north) and the disbanding of militias" in the government-controlled south.
He also blasted the Young Patriots, a pro-Gbagbo band of mostly unemployed youths who had in the past-wreaked havoc in the main commercial city of Abidjan and attacked French nationals, institutions and businesses.
He said: "They are not young and certainly not patriots", adding that their leader Charles Ble Goude's self-professed claimed to be a "minister of the streets" was dangerous.
- AFP