Ivory Coast rebels agree to cease-fire
BOUAKE, Ivory Coast (AP) – Ivory Coast rebels agreed to a cease-fire Thursday in a steamroller offensive that has taken half the country in just over two weeks, West African mediators announced – saying the way was now clear for peace talks. “They have agreed to a cease-fire,” negotiator Mohamed Ibn Chambas told journalists after foreign ministers of five West African nations flew into the heart of rebel-held territory to press for the cease-fire.
Speaking in the central city of Bouake, where the talks took place, he said a cease-fire deal would be signed in the nation’s capital, Yamoussoukro, on Friday.
Chambas said he hoped the mediators would be able to discuss the rebels’ grievances after the agreement was signed. It was not immediately clear how long the cease-fire would last, or what, if any, conditions were attached to the deal.
Ivory Coast has been plunged into crisis since a Sept. 19 uprising by disgruntled soldiers, who have since captured Bouake and the northern opposition stronghold of Korhogo, as well as most of the northern half of the country. Around 300 people died in the first days of the uprising – the nation’s deadliest ever.
Desperate to avert an all-out conflict, the top West African envoys came to Bouake to urge the rebels to lay down their arms.
President Laurent Gbagbo’s government – having already yielded the north of Ivory Coast to the rebels in just 15 days – has made clear it is open to a cease-fire.
The peace mission, including foreign ministers from five nations, arrived in French army helicopters and were driven to a French school through quiet streets, which betrayed no signs of the conflict that has split the once-stable nation in two.
At the school, rebel leaders kept the foreign ministers waiting for an hour before driving up in a convoy of pickup trucks. Bearded rebel Tuo Fozie climbed out, shook hands and saluted.
Talks began in a cluster of tiny pastel school chairs under the school’s tin-roof pavilion
The meeting itself provided mediators – and the world at large – a look at those claiming to direct Ivory Coast’s shadowy rebels.
“This is the first contact by anybody really with the other side. So we are all a bit mystified as to who the other side is and what they are demanding,” Chambas said before the talks.
Heavily armed French soldiers, part of a 1,000-strong force in the former French colony, stood on guard among the palm trees and flowers planted in the schoolyard. Outside the school, rebels, dressed in a mix of uniforms and T-shirts, manned a roadblock.
A French military cargo plane flew the delegation to Yamoussoukro, the nation’s capital.
and a base for the formidable French force.
The delegation included foreign ministers from Ghana, Togo, Niger, Nigeria and Mali – the sixth member of the contact group, Guinea-Bissau, was not represented. Regional leaders hope to stop Ivory Coast, long an anchor of stability in a war-riven region, from following neighbors Sierra Leone and Liberia down the path to full-scale civil war.
The insurgents include a core group of 750-800 soldiers dismissed from the army for suspected disloyalty. Well-armed and well-disciplined, they have spread north and west. In a sign of their expanding reach, they entered the far-eastern town of Bouna on Tuesday night, but left the following day.
Their ultimate goal is Abidjan, one of West Africa’s leading cities, and the key to holding a once-stable, now-shattered country that remains one of the region’s economic powerhouses.
Residents in isolated northern towns at times describe loyalist forces abandoning their posts without a fight, as rebels approached.
“We had heard rumors that the rebels were coming so they changed into civilian clothes before they came,” one man in the eastern town of Bouna, reached by telephone, said of the loyalists.
In northwestern Odienne, a resident said there had been no shooting when the rebels arrived.
“We can’t really talk about resistance. They came into town without anything happening,” he said.
Town by town, residents describe rebels roaring in, firing guns in the air, ransacking police headquarters – and then, sometimes, roaring out again.
The hit-and-run raids indicate rebels may not yet have enough men to hold all the towns in their reach.
Western diplomats say that each town raided adds more weapons to the rebels’ arsenal.
Loyalist forces “are not really in the west or north anymore. They are in the south preparing for the big one,” said one Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The embattled government has yet to make good on repeated threats to oust rebels from their strongholds.
“Our units are in a defensive position,” said Lt. Col. Philippe Mangou, the commanding officer in Yamoussoukro. “Our troops’ morale is high. We are just waiting for the order to march on Bouake,” he added.
Rebels say only a formidable French military presence at Yamoussoukro is blocking their drive south there.
The French say they are there to protect foreign nationals and provide logistical support to the embattled government. Ivory Coast held about 20,000 French and about 2,000 Americans before the uprising.
French and American troops have evacuated around 2,500 foreign nationals from rebel-held areas, ferrying them through Yamoussoukro.