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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

COTE D'IVOIRE: Rebels hint at secession after failure of Accra summit

BOUAKE, 12 November 2003 (IRIN) - Rebels occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire sent out mixed signals on Wednesday about how they intended to proceed following the failure of a West African summit to achieve a breakthrough in the country's deadlocked peace process.

Louis-Andre Dakoury-Tabley, the deputy leader of the rebel movement, officially known as "The New Forces," said in a speech that nothing more could be expected of the French-brokered peace agreement signed in January and the rebels might consider establishing a separate state in the area under their control.

However, an official statement issued at the end of a three-day Economic and Social Forum in the rebel capital Bouake, said: "The New Forces reiterate their total and unconditional adherence to the Marcoussis agreement."

Dakoury-Tabley said in a speech to the closing session of the forum, that the meeting of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo with six other West African heads of state in the Ghanaian capital Accra on Tuesday had been a failure, because Gbagbo had refused to make any of the concessions that the other leaders had demanded of him.

"Accra III failed, not because of wishes of the heads of state of ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), but because President Laurent Gbagbo was summoned by his peers and refused to give ground to them," the deputy secretary general of the New Forces said.

"Those who talk about secession will from now on be right, because there is nothing more we can expect from the Marcoussis agreement," he added.

The forum was called to discuss ways of making the rebel-held zone, which mainly comprises their poorer rural areas of Cote d'Ivoire, more economically self-sufficient. The north has been financially cut off from the rest of the country since civil war broke out in September last year.

Officials at the presidency and the office of Prime Minister Seydou Diarra were not immediately available for comment on the outcome of Tuesday's summit in Accra.

It was called to find a way of bringing the rebels back into the peace process. They walked out of Diarra's broad-based government of national reconciliation on 23 September in protest at what they called Gbagbo's refusal to implement in full the terms of the Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement and froze plans to disarm.

In particular, the rebels protested at Gbagbo's refusal to delegate effective power to ministers in Diarra's coalition government.The issue has also caused tension between Diarra, a former civil servant and politically neutral figure, and the head of state.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

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