Representatives of Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo and New Forces rebel leader Guillaume Soro started holding face-to-face talks on Monday in a bid to promote a stalled peace process.
The talks are taking place in Ouagadougou under the mediation of Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, an Agence France-Presse journalist in the Burkina Faso capital said.
Compaore recently assumed the presidency of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States and was tasked with facilitating the direct talks, proposed late last year by Gbagbo.
A conflict sparked by an unsuccessful coup bid against Gbagbo in 2002 has politically and militarily split the one-time bastion of stability in West Africa into a rebel-held north and a government-ruled south.
A peace process in the world’s largest cocoa producer and former economic hub of the region began in January 2003, but has not moved much due to bickering between the protagonists. — AFP
