Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo announced late on Tuesday he has agreed to allow opposition leader Alassane Ouattara to stand in a presidential election in October, removing a key hurdle to ending years of strife in the West African nation.
Ouattara, a former prime minister, was excluded from earlier elections on the grounds that it was not clear whether he was eligible under a controversial nationality rule.
In a televised address to the nation, Gbagbo said that in accordance with a peace agreement signed in Pretoria, South Africa, on April 6 he would implement article 48 of the Constitution that allows the president special powers in certain circumstances.
”In accordance with this article, I have decided … that the candidates put forward by political parties who signed the Marcoussis accord are eligible for the presidential election of October 2005 only,” he said.
”As a result, Mr Alassane Ouattara can be a candidate if he wants.”
The Marcoussis accord, signed near Paris in January 2003, intended to bring rebel and opposition leaders into a transition government to end a civil war sparked by a September 2002 bid by northern rebels to oust Gbagbo’s government.
The former French colony is currently divided between the mainly Christian south and the rebel-held Muslim majority north, with French and African troops under a United Nations umbrella maintaining a fragile peace.
”From this day and until the end of the crisis,” Gbagbo vowed to take ”all measures called for under the circumstances” under the provision of Article 48.
The Ivorian leader paid a solemn tribute to South African President Thabo Mbeki’s role as mediator in the conflict.
”He listened to everyone in order to understand and help us to understand,” he said of the South African leader.
Mbeki had called on Gbagbo to allow all candidates, including Ouattara, to contest the presidential election due to be held in October.
Many of Gbagbo’s most loyal backers were implacably hostile to a return to the political stage of Ouattara, a Muslim from the north of the country.
Some hold Ouattara, the head of the Rally of Republicans (RDR) party, responsible for the country’s plight — since his exclusion from the previous election had greatly inflamed tensions between Abidjan and the Muslim north.
As well as settling the dispute over presidential candidates, the April 6 peace deal, signed by Gbagbo as well as rebel and opposition leaders, also calls for the immediate disarmament and dismantling of militias.
It also aims to allow the rebels to return to the transition government they quit over fears for their safety.
Disarmament under the terms of the peace deal, overseen by United Nations peacekeepers, got under way last week as rebel and government troops started pulling back their heavy guns from the front line.
Although few pieces of heavy artillery have yet been removed, the UN envoy in Côte d’Ivoire, Pierre Schori, hailed the process as the first sign of true progress after a series of peace accords.
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. – Sapa-AFP