Two rebel groups in Ivory Coast on Monday boosted hopes for an end to 16 weeks of war dividing the west African country, saying they were ready to attend peace talks in Paris.
The main insurgent group and the government meanwhile accused each other of falsely pledging to honour a violated truce. Two rebel groups which emerged in the west at the end of November, taking several key areas near the prized cocoa belt of the world’s largest producer, said they would go to Paris for talks on January 15, if invited.
”I have not received an official or unofficial invitation,” Sergeant Felix Doh of the Popular Movement of Ivory Coast’s Far West (MPIGO) told AFP, but he stressed he would go if he was asked. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, who ended a trip to Ivory Coast on Saturday after winning peace promises from President Laurent Gbagbo and the main rebel group, said on Monday that that the French ambassador would contact the MPIGO ”in coming days.”
Speaking on Radio France Internationale, De Villepin said he would have liked to meet the MPIGO, but ”did not have the time”.
”It’s with great satisfaction that I note that the MPIGO has said it wants to work for the ceasefire and has agreed to the idea of the round-table talks in Paris,” he said.
Doh said he was due to meet French military officers and ”probably some diplomats” on Wednesday.
The Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP) echoed their brothers in arms.
Deli Gaspard, MJP chief of military operations, said: ”I have not been invited given the fact that I could not make it to a meeting in Bouake,” the headquarters of the main rebel group, where De Villepin met its leaders on Saturday, also adding that he would attend if invited.
The Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement (MPCI), which has held the northern half of country since shortly after the uprising began on September 19, Monday said Gbagbo would not keep his pledge to France to respect a truce or throw out mercenaries.
”Gbagbo will not respect his pledges,” Sidiki Konate, a representative for the main rebel force told AFP by telephone.
”We don’t have any confidence in him…,” he said. ”Gbagbo says one thing in the morning and something else in the evening.”
The scathing remarks came a day after a senior aide to Gbagbo said that while the Ivorian head of state would honour his promises to de Villepin, the MPCI would renege on its ceasefire pledge.
Gbagbo’s aide Toussaint Alain also accused the MPCI of repeatedly torpedoing earlier peace talks in Togo’ capital Lome, violating an October 17 ceasefire at least 24 times and carrying out ”murderous attacks on civilians.”
The peace talks in Paris among the main political players in Ivory Coast will be followed by a summit of African heads of state a week later, which will be attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Some 2 500 French troops have been deployed in the biggest military intervention by Paris in Africa since the 1980s. They are enforcing the ceasefire and protecting foreigners and are empowered to shoot at anyone overtly blocking their mission.
Meanwhile, the MPIGO on Monday claimed to have seized the south-western town of Grabo near the Liberian border and also close to Ivory Coast’s second port San Pedro, which handles about half the cocoa exports.
”I took Grabo day before yesterday,” Doh said.
But army representative Lieutenant-Colonel Jules Yao Yao immediately denied this, saying the MPIGO had launched an attack on the town when government troops were battling raiders from adjoining Liberia but were beaten back.
The conflict has been complicated by reports of the involvement of mercenaries and Liberian fighters and the discovery of two mass graves thought to contain up to 200 bodies.
The rebel groups say they are fighting to secure the rights of the Muslim-majority people of the north and ethnic groups in the west who, they claim, have been marginalised since the death of the country’s first president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, in 1993. – Sapa-AFP