French troop reinforcements due in Ivory Coast at the weekend will come equipped with a stronger mandate aimed at quelling unrest in the former colony, a representative said.
Commandant Frederic Thomaso said the French force, which will be joined by 160 more soldiers on Saturday, will no longer merely monitor but will enforce a ceasefire which rebels and the army signed on October 17 but breached last month as fighting flared again.
”Before we did not react when they violated the ceasefire, but from now on we will make it understood to all that they have to respect the ceasefire and not endanger the stability of Ivory Coast,” he told journalists.
France this week signalled that it would try to take in hand the worst crisis to hit Ivory Coast since independence in 1960, sparked by a September 19 rebellion that has torn the country in two. It announced that it would deploy 500 more soldiers to reinforce its current 1 200-strong force.
In a tandem political effort, Paris also said it was prepared to host a summit of all African leaders affected by the conflict that is reverberating through Ivory Coast’s western Africa region.
Lieutenant-Colonel Ange-Antoine Leccia, the chief representative for the French mission here, said 160 men from France’s first foreign parachute regiment based in Calvi, in Corsica, would fly into Abidjan on Saturday afternoon.
”The reinforcement will consist of two parachurte companies, a reconnaissance squadron equipped with light armoured vehicles, logistical units and additional command elements,” he said.
”The aim of this reinforcement is that the ceasefire holds.”
But he added that French forces were not mandated to try and recapture territory from rebels who control the northern half of Ivory Coast.
”Our job is not to take back the north,” he said.
Leccia said the additional troops would be deployed along a ”line of non-engagement” which roughly divides the country in two and was agreed on in the October truce.
The conflict in Ivory Coast escalated in late November when two rebel movements took up arms in the west and seized several towns.
It drew a heavy counter-offensive from the loyalist forces and according to humanitarian groups some 50 000 people have fled the fighting and at least 150 have been killed solely in clashes in Man, the main town in the west.
They control most of the Muslim-majority north, while the government of President Laurent Gbagbo controls the south. This week fears arose that all-out war between the rebels and the army was imminent as both sides began recruiting more fighters. – Sapa-AFP