Talks to end years of rebellion in the Côte d’Ivoire resumed this week at the South African capital. But although government and rebel representatives in Pretoria may be speaking of peace, the areas they control are marked by persistent human rights abuses.
Unidentified men armed with guns and knives attacked villagers in Côte d’Ivoire’s western cocoa-growing area, killing 41 people and injuring 64, officials said on Wednesday. The attack occurred near the town of Duekoue, 400km north-west of the commercial capital, Abidjan.
New talks to set a calendar to begin disarming fighters in Côte d’Ivoire were postponed on Friday as both sides in the protracted crisis huddled to weigh indictments in a World Bank report that judged all preparations ”insufficient”. Much of the fault, according to a World Bank report, lies with the national disarmament commission.
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.
Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo is to start on Monday two weeks of talks with different groups in the country with a view to implementing a peace deal brokered by South Africa. But he faces problems given the reluctance of rebel groups to lay down their arms, as well as reservations among his own supporters over the accord.
A Côte d’Ivoire rebel group said on Sunday they had arrested a New Zealand man allegedly hired to kill its leaders, as well as 35 militiamen who were planning an offensive against the group. The alleged mercenary, holder of a New Zealand passport with the name Brian Hamish Sands, was arrested on Friday after arriving in Bouake.
Rebels holding the north of Côte d’Ivoire say they are gearing up for an imminent return to hostilities in the divided and tense West African state following an attack last month on one of their positions. Humanitarian workers said, meanwhile, that a recent attack in the restive west has sent up to 15 000 people in the area fleeing.
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/ 28 February 2005
International efforts to mediate the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire have been buried by the government’s ”acts of war”, the West African state’s rebels said on Monday after pro-government militants attacked one of their positions in the restive west. More than 100 militants waged a pre-dawn attack near Logouale, about 450km north-west of Abidjan.
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/ 27 January 2005
Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo refused once again to approve a key change to the Constitution voted for by Parliament which would allow a popular exiled opposition leader to run against him, press reports said on Thursday. ”How can I promulgate a proposed law which has not been voted on?” said Gbagbo.
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/ 24 January 2005
Côte d’Ivoire’s air force took to the skies again at the weekend following permission from the United Nations to repair aircraft wrecked in November by French forces after they killed French peacekeepers, witnesses and UN officials said on Monday. a helicopter gunship made several test flights over the political capital of Yamoussoukro.
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/ 16 January 2005
Exiled Côte d’Ivoire opposition leader Alassane Ouattara will have another shot at the presidency in the 2005 elections, after being barred from standing five years ago, supporters said on Saturday. Ouattara currently lives in exile in France but said this week he will run for office in 2005 if his party wishes him to.
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/ 6 December 2004
South African President Thabo Mbeki met his Côte d’Ivoire counterpart Laurent Gbagbo and other high-ranking officials on Monday as he wrapped up a four-day peace-making trip. Meanwhile, a key figure in Côte d’Ivoire’s struggling peace process resigned as the United Nations’s special envoy to the country.
Mbeki seen as ‘guarantee of peace’
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/ 8 November 2004
French troops fired in the air on Monday to disperse thousands of protesters gathered in the main Côte d’Ivoire city of Abidjan. A crowd tried unsuccessfully to break through a security cordon set up around the Hotel Ivoire, where about 50 French armoured vehicles have been stationed since late on Sunday.
Mbeki tasked with defusing crisis
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/ 7 November 2004
A French military helicopter swept in to pluck civilians from a hotel in Abidjan on Sunday as mobs burned and looted buildings across Côte d’Ivoire’s largest city. A French military helicopter landed early on Sunday afternoon at Hotel Ivoire, one of the country’s leading hotels. Witnesses watched as about 12 people with suitcases ran to the helicopter.
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/ 6 November 2004
Côte d’Ivoire government forces on Friday resumed air strikes on former rebels while political violence targeting opposition parties in Abidjan raised fears of new civil strife. Regional leaders prepared talks to cool the situation with African Union leaders calling a crisis meeting for Saturday, while United Nations agencies suspended relief work in response to fighting.
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/ 3 November 2004
Gunshots rang out at the main prison in Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital on Wednesday, one day after a riot over scarce water left at least seven people dead, an aid worker said. ”The situation is permanently tense,” said Antoine Foucher of the French aid group Médécins sans Frontières, which works at the prison.
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/ 28 October 2004
Backers of Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo have destroyed opposition newspapers seized from newsagents and street vendors, claiming on Thursday that the publications are inciting rebellion. A European-born bookstore owner in Abidjan, the country’s economic capital, said he was threatened with killing and rape.
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/ 13 October 2004
No rebel forces will present themselves this week at a disarmament site in north-eastern Côte d’Ivoire, rebel spokesperson Sidiki Konate announced on Wednesday. ”We will not allow ourselves to be drawn into the political manipulation by President [Laurent] Gbagbo, who is fixated on that date,” Konate said.
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/ 3 September 2004
Two years after Côte d’Ivoire plunged into a low-level civil war following a rebel uprising against President Laurent Gbagbo, the West African state remains bitterly divided, with only one of 10 new laws aimed at reconciling the country passed. Another touchy issue in the country is that of foreigners claiming Ivorian nationality.
Cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s top producer, have accused President Laurent Gbagbo’s government of complicity in the shoddy management of the sector, which they say has driven prices down and forced growers into poverty.
Côte d’Ivoire’s political opposition met President Laurent Gbagbo on Tuesday for the first time in three months, with high hopes that a rebel boycott of the talks will not impede efforts to reconcile the troubled African cocoa giant. The day of talks aimed to revive a moribund, French-brokered peace pact signed in January last year.
Côte d’Ivoire’s rebels blamed the country’s president Laurent Gbagbo on Monday for what they described as an attempted assassination of their leader and an attack on their positions in a key northern city. Automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenade launchers resounded in the city of Korhogo on Sunday evening, in what officials said was a conflict between different rebel factions.
Automatic-weapon fire and grenade launchers resounded throughout a major northern Côte d’Ivoire city on Sunday evening, in what a military source said was an outbreak of fighting between rival rebel groups. ”It seems there are two rebel factions who have been fighting each other over the last few hours,” said a military official.
Abidjan braced on Tuesday for more violence after a military air strike that breached the ceasefire zone dividing Côte d’Ivoire in retaliation for an attack against a military post in the country’s centre. Police officers mounted foot patrols and erected barricades to dissuade protesters from gathering outside the French embassy.
Shivering monkeys huddle on a bare cement floor behind rust-scarred bars. Elephants, whose tusks lend civil-war divided Côte d’Ivoire its name, struggle in thick mud. A safety grating covering the alligator pond is peeling back, opening a gap that looked wide enough for the beasts’ thick jaws to pass through.
The day the tanks arrived at Rafah zoo
Several hundred youth supporters of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo staged a peaceful demonstration against the United Nations in Abidjan on Thursday as the UN prepared to publish a report on the security forces’ bloody repression of an opposition protest in March.
Aids activists are angry that six months after Côte d’Ivoire received a -million grant from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis to fight the disease, not a penny of the money has been spent on actual projects to fight the spread of HIV or help those living with Aids.
Côte d’Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo blasted French media on Tuesday for leaking a United Nations report that implicated his government in a violent crackdown on an anti-government rally. The report by the human rights commission was presented in full on Monday by Radio France International.
The mysterious disappearance of an independent Canadian-French journalist late last week dominated the daily press in the Côte d’Ivoire main city of Abidjan on Monday. Guy-Andre Kieffer is an economic and financial writer specialising in reporting on Côte d’Ivoire’s main cash crop, cocoa.
Lawmakers in Côte d’Ivoire have begun debating revisions to a controversial law on the status of foreigners in the West African country, which has been blamed for sparking tensions that led to civil war in 2002. The National Assembly met on Monday and Tuesday in an extraordinary session to debate changes to the law.
An uneasy calm hung over Côte d’Ivoire’s main city, Abidjan, on Monday as opposition backers failed to heed a call to renew protests against President Laurent Gbagbo, after at least 37 people were killed when the army quashed a demonstration last week.