Abidjan

The political party founded by Côte d’Ivoire’s slain former military ruler General Robert Guei, the Union for Democracy and Peace in Côte d’Ivoire, decided on Thursday to pull its two ministers out of the government, its secretary-general, Alassane Salif N’Diaye, said.

Thirty people were killed, including three police offiers, as security forces violently quashed an anti-government protest in Abidjan on Thursday, said one of the organisers, the opposition Rally of the Republicans. After the quashing of the protest, the Rally of the Republicans said it was pulling out of the unity government.

Ghanaian President John Kufuor on Wednesday flew to Côte d’Ivoire in a bid to defuse a looming crisis as opposition parties prepared to defy a ban on demonstrations by President Laurent Gbagbo. Kufuor is to intervene in his capacity as president of the Economic Community of West African States.

Côte d’Ivoire’s oil sector lost 30% in potential revenue in 2003 owing to the political and military crisis that has divided the west African state for 17 months, officials said on Tuesday.

A top rebel commander was shot dead outside a nightclub in northern Côte d’Ivoire on Sunday, the rebels’ military chief said. It was not known who carried out the killing of Staff Sergeant Adama Coulibaly in Korhogo, or how many gunmen were involved. But five of the commander’s bodyguards were detained as suspects

Western donors have pledged -million to finance the reconstruction of Liberia over the next two years — considerably more than the United Nations and World Bank had asked for. However, they have virtually ignored a separate UN appeal for -million of immediate humanitarian assistance.

As many as 30 000 former fighters could go through Cote d’Ivoire’s disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, the head of the National DDR Committee, Alain Donwahi, said on Sunday. ”We don’t think we will go beyond 30 000 ex-combatants”, Donwahi said on national TV.

Côte d’Ivoire’s former rebel leader Guillaume Soro was on Monday to hold talks in the main city Abidjan with President Laurent Gbagbo, sources said. Soro was absent from last week’s first extraordinary session of the full council of ministers since the former rebels launched a boycott of government meetings in September.

Eighteen black-clad assailants and one Ivorian soldier were killed in overnight gunbattles in the heart of the main Côte d’Ivoire city of Abidjan, Defence Minister Rene Amani said on Friday. Attacks in three areas around the city have cast a pall on efforts to end a 14-month political and military crisis in the country.

The future of a crucial program to disarm fighters in Côte d’Ivoire was in jeopardy on Friday, with rebels backing away from the plan just hours after President Laurent Gbagbo announced its beginning was imminent. Gbagbo on Thursday announced a December 15 start date for nationwide disarmament.

Côte d’Ivoire’s journalists and press barons were urged on Monday to put past quarrels aside and work for peace as a Press Week for National Reconciliation and Peace formally got under way in the commercial capital, Abidjan. Ivorian newspapers have been strongly criticised for being excessively partisan.

Côte d’Ivoire security forces have arrested 11 members of a leading opposition party in an alleged plot to assassinate top government figures. The roundup of followers of former prime minister Allasane Ouattara is the latest in weeks of arrests in alleged coup and assassination plots.

A new survey of young children living in camps for displaced people in the Liberian capital Monrovia indicates that nearly 40% of them suffer from malnutrition.

Dahkpannah Charles Ghankay Taylor, the brutal warlord turned president of Liberia who now stands accused of horrendous war crimes, was on Friday under renewed pressure to go into exile to boost peace efforts in his impoverished west African state.

At least 25 Liberian journalists have been displaced from their homes by recent fighting in the capital, Monrovia, while others have been robbed, abducted and tortured by government fighters and rebels of the Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd), the Media Foundation of West Africa (MFWA) said on Tuesday.

Liberia’s main rebel group, which has battled its way to the edge of the capital Monrovia, is said to be guilty of the same massive human rights abuses of which it accuses President Charles Taylor’s government.

The government of Gabon has suspended the publication of two magazines in a move which ”looks like a campaign of intimidation against the privately owned press” said the French-based campaign group for press freedom, Reporters sans Frontieres.

Amnesty International on Thursday criticised a reciprocal
impunity agreement between the war-ravaged west African country of Sierra Leone and the United States, saying it would allow perpetrators of war crimes to go unpunished

The Côte d’Ivoire’s armed forces and three rebel groups in this troubled west African country have agreed to a weapon-free zone where both sides could move freely without weapons.

Cotton producing countries in the world’s poorest continent Africa are up in arms against US and European subsidies which they claim are not only anti-competitive but ruinous for their economies.

A new ceasefire between government and rebel forces in Cote d’Ivoire took effect at midnight on Saturday following talks between the two sides earlier this week aimed at stabilising the volatile situation on the Liberian border.

The international watchdog Human Rights Watch has just released a report documenting the trafficking of children in Togo, in particular girls used as domestics and market vendors and boys made to work as labourers on farms.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the Ivory Coast, Mohammed Ahmad al-Rasheed, was found dead on Friday in the economic capital Abidjan.

Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has signed a decree naming the interim defence and interior ministers in a unity government aimed at ending a ruinous rebel war, said official sources on Wednesday.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone made its first indictment on Monday of five people who are to stand trial for crimes against humanity. They are accused of committing the crimes during Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war that ended in 2002.

Ivory Coast’s army on Monday rejected rebel claims they carried out a massacre of hundreds of people in a lawless region contested by several rebel and pro-government groups.

Ivory Coast’s powerful first lady Simone Gbagbo was on Tuesday quoted as saying that she has finally accepted a French-mediated peace deal to end a five-month rebel war that gives rebels seats in a new unity government.

Government helicopter gunships attacked a rebel-held Ivory Coast town, killing 20 civilians and injuring many others, a leader of the west African nation’s five-month insurgency charged on Sunday.

Reporters sans Frontieres has condemned the sentencing of two journalists from the Chadian weekly, Notre Temps, to six months in prison for an article published in their periodical.

President Laurent Gbagbo urged his war-divided country to give a peace accord a chance, dismissing fears by some supporters that it gives too much power to rebels.

The United Nations has decided to pull its non-essential staff out of Ivory Coast, riven by a five-month rebel war, diplomatic sources said on Thursday.

Ivory Coast’s leading human rights group have blamed shadowy ”death squads” for the murder of a popular television star and opposition activist which fuelled fresh rioting in Abidjan.