I Coast sets election date

2005-04-29 09:42

Abidjan - Ivory Coast's government announced long-awaited presidential elections will be held October 30, and the top opposition leader said a government decision allowing him to run in the poll was a crucial step toward democracy in the West African state.

Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister barred from presidential elections in 2000 because of a controversial nationality clause in the constitution, offered reserved praise Thursday for President Laurent Gbagbo, his political rival.

Gbagbo reversed the ban on Tuesday, allowing Ouattara to stand in the elections, a key demand of rebels who control the northern half of the country.

The move comes after South African President Thabo Mbeki brokered a peace deal earlier this month to end the Ivory Coast crisis, calling for a nationwide disarmament campaign that's been proposed to begin in mid-May.

The ban on Ouattara's candidacy helped spark a crisis that led to war in Ivory Coast, which exploded in 2002 when a failed attempt to oust Gbagbo sparked a civil war that has left the country divided in between the government and rebels.

"It's an important decision, an incontestable first step toward democracy in Ivory Coast," Ouattara told French daily Le Monde in remarks published on Thursday. "But all problems aren't solved, far from it," he said.

Government spokesperson Hubert Oulai said the October 30 election date had been set during a cabinet meeting.

Ouattara said his candidacy would represent "an act of national reconciliation."

He was barred from running for president under a clause in the constitution that requires presidential candidates be second-generation Ivorians. Ouattara denies government claims that his mother, whose family was from neighbouring Burkina Faso, is not Ivorian.

Mbeki, who is the African Union mediator in the conflict, has met repeatedly with government representatives and rebels to try to push through a peace plan brokered earlier this month.

The West African nation has been split into a rebel-held north and loyalist south since a September 2002 coup attempt propelled the world's largest cocoa grower into civil war. Both sides signed peace accords but failed to carry them out.

- AP