Ivory Coast pulled back from the brink of civil war Friday, with a ceasefire signed exactly four weeks after mutineers and ex-soldiers staged an uprising that threatened to destabilise all of west Africa.
Regional mediators succeeded midday Thursday in winning rebel support for a deal to end the violence that split Ivory Coast in two, with the rebels controlling the northern half of the country.
President Laurent Gbagbo announced 12 hours later on state television that he also had accepted the deal, which clears the way for political talks to address the rebels’ grievances.
He also asked France to provide troops to patrol a buffer zone between the two sides for one week, and to help local government get its public services running again in the rebel-held areas. His request was granted with a statement on Friday by the French forces’ commander General Emmanuel Beth that his troops would temporarily take part in efforts to implement the ceasefire.
France already has 1 000 troops in Ivory Coast to protect its 20 000 citizens who live there. ”In the name of Ivory Coast, I accept the framework outlined by this pact as a base for negotiations,” Gbagbo said in an address to the nation on state television.
The president asked the rebels ”not to be scared of tribunals and come home to the republic,” and exhorted them to ”play a fair game.” However, he accused them of waging a ”dirty, unjust war.”
He said discussions between the two sides would start soon, probably from Tuesday in Ivory Coast. Master Sergeant Tuho Fozie, who led the rebel delegation, said: ”We have accepted to sign this document which will surely in coming days bring us to discussions to resolve a number of issues that we have been talking of since the first day.”
”This is why we consider this agreement of the utmost
importance,” he said. The rebels has said they want to oust Gbagbo, to reverse an order to demobilise some 700 troops, and to fight for the rights of Ivory Coast’s Muslim majority population who they claim have been marginalised.
The rebels’ political incarnation, the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement, had called for new elections after an eight-month transition period. The unrest dealt a severe blow to Ivory Coast — the world’s largest cocoa producer — which was beginning to regain its status as a haven of peace and stability.
After winning controversial presidential elections in October 2000, Gbagbo launched national peace talks to bury social and political tensions and violence after the 1999 coup.
He appeared to have succeeded in burying the hatchet between himself and three other national leaders. But one of the players, former military ruler general Robert Guei, was killed on the first day of the uprising in Abidjan.
The uprising had prompted six western nations — Belgium, Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United States — to advise their nationals to leave Ivory Coast.
Several African countries — including Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria — organised evacuations of their nationals living in Ivory Coast, after many fell victim to anti-immigrant attacks in the wake of the uprising. Considered a pillar of political stability and economic prosperity until a Christmas Eve coup in 1999, an estimated 4,5-million people had immigrated to Ivory Coast from other African countries.
The threat of a refugee exodus had drawn dire warnings from the United Nations of a looming humanitarian catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of people already have been displaced within Ivory Coast, as people left their homes either for fear of attack or to search for food after the fighting cut off supply routes and closed many shops and markets. – Sapa-AFP