Ivory Coast’s Interior Minister Paul Yao N’dre said late on Tuesday that a French-brokered accord signed last week to end four months of conflict is ”null and void.”
”These accords say that the prime minister shares power with the president. That is unacceptable,” he said in the Togolese capital.
”…This regime does not share power between the democratically elected president and a prime minister named overseas,” the minister said in a speech broadcast on Togolese television.
Thousands of youths ran riot for a fourth day in Abidjan on Tuesday against the French-brokered pact which keeps President Laurent Gbagbo in office but clips his powers and offers key cabinet posts to members of the rebel movement which controls half the country.
Yao N’dre scoffed at the idea of rebels in the government ranks: ”All you have to do is fire off a few rounds to get invited into the government and to destabilise the whole of the sub-region.”
Gbagbo on Monday appealed to his backers to stop the violence, but also sowed confusion by describing the Paris accord he had signed as just a set of ”proposals.”
On Tuesday Ivory Coast’s armed forces refused point-blank to accept rebels in a unity government as the main rebel group in the four-month war urged government forces to respect the deal. An informed source said the joint armed forces, with police, customs and other security services, clearly indicated they would not see rebels given the key interior and defence ministries in a memorandum submitted to Gbagbo.
Gbagbo meanwhile said he would not step down in the face the growing unrest over the peace deal signed in France last week, saying the country would descend into civil war.
”I have been elected for five years, I will govern and I will remain,” he told a women’s group, according to extracts of the speech broadcast on state television.
”I do not want to leave my country to civil war. If Gbagbo
resigns today, his supporters will also rebel… To resign today in Ivory Coast would be to open up a dangerous path, and I do not want to open that path.”
Yao N’dre was categorical in his dismissal of the peace deal; ”This accord in light of what has happened, is null and void,” he said here after a meeting with Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema. – Sapa-AFP