Ivorian opposition leader Alassane Ouattara on Wednesday called on the United Nations to organise general elections scheduled for October in the divided West African country.
Ouattara said he made the proposal during talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who is acting as the African Union’s chief mediator in the Ivorian conflict.
”We believe the electoral process should be given to the UN from A to Z,” Ouattara told reporters in Johannesburg after a series of meetings with Mbeki since Sunday.
”So that these elections are disputed by nobody, we wish that the UN deal with the whole of the electoral process … as was the case in other countries such as Afghanistan or East Timor,” he said.
Mbeki has been locked in peace talks with Ouattara, of the Rally of Republicans, and Lambert Kouassi Konan, vice-president of the opposition Côte d’Ivoire Democratic Party, since Sunday.
He has also been meeting with Guillaume Soro, leader of the New Forces rebel group that is controlling northern Côte d’Ivoire.
The discussions touched on a five-point road map or peace blueprint Mbeki submitted during a peace mission to Côte d’Ivoire in December, which provides for disarmament and restoring a power-sharing government among other issues.
The parties are expected to wrap up their discussions later on Wednesday.
Asked how Mbeki reacted to the proposal that the UN organise the elections, Outtara said: ”He promised to study it.”
The general elections in Côte d’Ivoire are scheduled to take place in October but various political groups have begun to question whether they will actually take place, in light of the tense situation in the country and the de facto division between the north and south.
The former French colony has been divided since a 2002 uprising between a mainly Christian south and a rebel-held Muslim majority north, with French and African troops under a UN umbrella maintaining a fragile peace.
Long seen as a beacon of peace and stability in troubled West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire experienced its first coup in December 1999 and has since been increasingly torn by ethnic hostilities, with northerners protesting against perceived discrimination by successive Abidjan governments.
Under an accord signed at Marcoussis in France in January 2003, a government of national unity was formed in Côte d’Ivoire, but an attack by government forces on northern positions in November halted any progress, prompting the AU to appoint Mbeki as mediator. — Sapa-AFP