Tensions have clearly eased in Côte d’Ivoire since rival leaders signed a peace deal, the United Nations’s assistant secretary general for peace missions, Hedi Hannabi, said on Tuesday.
”I found that there is a very clear, very palpable lessening of tension,” he told a UN-run radio station at the end of a two-week fact-finding mission.
Hannabi said he had detected a ”very clear willingness” of rival leaders to implement the peace accord, which was signed last month.
Also on Tuesday, the Ivorian Cabinet met in Grand-Bassam, south of the capital, to discuss the implementation of the peace accord, an official source said.
The meeting is to result in a ”road map for a clear implementation of the programmes included in the Ougadougou accords”, according to a statement released by Prime Minister Guillaume Soro’s office.
It is to focus on the redeployment of state services, the disarmament of former combatants and the merging of pro-government and rebel forces.
After several mediation attempts by former colonial ruler France, the United Nations, the African Union and a West African regional bloc failed, President Laurent Gbagbo and Soro finalised their own peace deal on March 4.
Under the agreement, Soro became prime minister, but doubts remain over the two men’s commitment to power sharing. — AFP
