Côte d’Ivoire foes on Wednesday pledged to begin disarming and agreed they would face sanctions if they failed to make good on their peace commitments for the west African country.
Following two-days of talks, President Laurent Gbagbo, his prime minister and three rivals including rebel leader Guillaume Soro, issued a declaration renewing their commitment to implement a South African-brokered peace accord signed on April 6.
They said they were ready to suffer the consequences if they failed to implement the provisions of the peace accord that are to pave the way for a presidential election set for October 30.
”The parties, as a further demonstration of their commitment to the implementation of the Pretoria agreements, agree that the AU (African Union) should impose appropriate sanctions against those parties who fail to implement the Pretoria agreements and block the peace process,” said the declaration.
It also said that South African President Thabo Mbeki would ask the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Côte d’Ivoire if deadlines are missed.
The sides also agreed that the dismantling of about 10Â 000 pro-government militias ”will commence immediately and end by August 20, 2005,” according to the declaration.
Rebel forces, who are believed to number about 48Â 000 and control the north of the country, are to begin disarming ”from the end of July,” it said.
The Pretoria accord signed on April 6 ran into a major hurdle this week when rebel forces made clear they would not abide by a June 27 deadline to disarm unless pro-government militias were taken out of action.
In their statement, the leaders recognised ”that it would be impossible to hold elections while this matter is outstanding”, referring to rebel disarmament and the dismantling of the militias.
In Abidjan on Wednesday, Gbagbo’s legal advisor Siene Oulai told a press conference that if the elections are not held by October 30, then Gbagbo would remain in office.
Capping the two days of talks at a presidential guesthouse in Pretoria, Mbeki declared: ”We made progress but we must keep up the pace” to implement the accord that he brokered as the AU’s mediator.
Attending the meetings were Gbagbo, Soro, Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, and opposition leaders Alassane Ouattara and Henri Konan Bedie.
Côte d’Ivoire, once a haven of stability in west Africa and the world’s top cocoa producer, has been split in two since a failed coup against Gbagbo in September 2002, pitting rebels from the Muslim-dominated north against the Christian-populated south.
The declaration also set a deadline of July 15 for all electoral laws to be adopted, including one that would set up an independent electoral commission that would be up and running by July 31 at the latest.
The renewed commitment to peace came a week after the UN Security Council decided to bolster the peacekeeping force in the former French colony ahead of the presidential election.
About 6 000 UN peacekeepers have been deployed in Côte d’Ivoire alongside 4 000 French troops with an additional 850 international troops to be sent to the west African state in the coming months.-Sapa-AFP