President Thabo Mbeki on Monday expressed his concern over the deteriorating security situation in Cote d’Ivoire and the increasing possibility of a resumption in that country’s civil war.
Speaking at the opening of the 24th General Assembly of the World Veterans Federation in Sandton, Mbeki called on the country’s people to look past petty differences at the consequences of war for themselves and their neighbours.
Referring to a recent book by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, who commanded United Nations troops in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide there, Mbeki said it was time to banish war from the process of structuring relations among human beings and between societies.
”This also applies to the Cote d’Ivoire, which threatens to explode again into an orgy of mass killings unless the people of that country find it within themselves to respond to the call made by General Dallaire to ‘rise above race, creed, colour, religion and national self-interest and put the good of humanity above the
good of our own little tribe.”’
Mbeki was speaking a day after disgruntled soldiers briefly seized control of Cote d’Ivoire’s state television headquarters to broadcast demands that French and West African peacekeepers leave the war-divided country so that the military could attack
northern-based rebels at their convenience.
Although the country’s civil war ended by agreement in July, Cote d’Ivoire is still divided along the former frontline and the rebels are refusing to take part in a power sharing government.
They claim President Laurent Gbagbo is refusing to devolve powers as provided for in a French-brokered peace deal in January. Gbagbo, for his part, wants the rebels to disarm first.
Cote d’Ivoire has been politically volatile since its first coup d’etat in December 1999. Some 4 000 French and 1 200 West African peacekeepers are patrolling the no man’s land between the antagonists. – Sapa