I Coast may have referendum

2005-01-11 09:22

Libreville - A referendum may be the way to solve a division in Ivory Coast over controversial nationality restrictions on presidential candidates, the African Union's Peace and Security Council said on Monday.

"The use of a referendum is one of the options which (Ivory Coast's President Laurent) Gbagbo might have recourse to... if it is organised in the spirit of Marcoussis," peace and security commissioner Said Djinnit said, without giving details, at the end of the first ever summit of the regional security body, held here.

The Marcoussis agreement, named for the town outside of Paris where the French-brokered pact was signed, is aimed at addressing the root causes of a September 2002 uprising by the mostly Muslim and immigrant north that continues to divide the west African state between rebel north and government south.

Gbagbo's opponents accuse him of blocking this crucial reform, which is an obligation of a four-phase solution to the two-year-old crisis in the world's top cocoa producer.

The Peace and Security Council, modelled on the United Nations Security Council, is a 15-nation wing of the African Union, which was set up after the turn of the century in place of the moribund post-colonial Organisation of African Unity.

Last month Ivorian deputies voted to overthrow the contentious Article 35, an amendment to the constitution that says the father and mother of the president must be Ivorians, eliminating many people of mixed parentage, including popular opposition politician Alassane Ouattara.

One-quarter of Ivory Coast's 16.8 million people have foreign roots, which under an increasingly xenophobic national policy known as Ivorianness sponsored by former president Henri Konan Bedie before he was overthrown in a 1999 coup, prevents them from holding national identity cards or owning land. - AFP

- SAPA