Rebels and the government of Ivory Coast will sign a ceasefire on Friday in the capital Yamoussoukro, senior regional official Mohamed Ibn Chambas announced on Thursday after a ministerial mediating team met insurgents in the rebel-held city of Bouake.
”I can inform you … they have agreed to a ceasefire. And we shall be arranging a ceasefire signing ceremony in Yamoussoukro tomorrow, Friday October 4th,” said Ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
The mediators, Ecowas foreign ministers, met for 90 minutes with six rebel representatives on the grounds of a high school guarded by French commandos.
”We hope that by having the ceasefire, the conditions will then exist under which we can discuss with them their grievances and seek dialogue and negotiations to resolve the crisis which has been going on for two weeks now,” Ibn Chambas said.
”It would be difficult to engage in dialogue and negotiations when there is fighting going on, so we want the fighting to stop … to create a conducive atmosphere for negotiations.”
Chambas announced when the mediators arrived that they were ”carrying a proposal from the Ivorian government for a ceasefire if the rebels reciprocate”.
The rebels — northern soldiers who had fled into exile and mutineers — launched an uprising on September 19. They now hold the mainly-Muslim northern half of the country and some towns in the centre.
The rebellion was crushed on its first day in Abidjan, the main city, on the Atlantic coast but spread to other parts of the west African nation.
About 400 people have died and several hundred have been wounded in the unrest.
An emergency Ecowas summit held in neighbouring Ghana on Sunday mandated Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Nigeria and Ghana to form a mediation group, along with South Africa, which currently chairs the African Union.
In Bouake on Thursday the foreign ministers from the five Ecowas countries sat in the open, near a bicycle shed, to talk to the rebels.
French soldiers manned an armoured car nearby, its cannon pointed at the city.
The rebel negotiators included Master Sergeant Tuo Fozie, who has been acting as their representative and who is wanted by the Ivorian authorities for his alleged involvement in a December 1999 coup and a subsequent failed putsch.
The rebels were welcomed by Togolese Defence Minister Assani Tidjani and went on to salute the Ecowas delegation. Cheick Oumar Diarra, the Ecowas deputy executive secretary for political affairs, defence and security, told them: ”Relax, relax, at ease.”
Thursday’s meeting was the first such contact with the rebels, who have taken over half of Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer, in just two weeks. – Sapa-AFP