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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
COTE D'IVOIRE: Annan warns country may slip back into conflict
ABIDJAN, 25 November 2003 (IRIN) - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned that Cote d'Ivoire could "slip back into conflict" as five West African governments began lobbying for a fully fledged UN peacekeeping force to be sent to the country.
Annan told the UN Security Council in New York on Monday that he was "deeply concerned" by a two-month-old impasse between President Laurent Gbagbo and rebels occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire.
"There is clearly a danger that Cote d'Ivoire could slip back into conflict," he warned, adding that parts of the rebel-held north were already "degenerating into lawlessness."
Annan said he would send a further assessment mission to Cote d'Ivoire soon to help him prepare recommendations on improving UN efforts to facilitate peace and stability in the country. This mission would consider whether the United Nations should reinforce its current present in Cote d'Ivoire, he added.
Annan was speaking as the foreign ministers of Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal and Mohamed Ibn Chambas, executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) urged members of the Security Council to upgrade the 1,300 ECOWAS peacekeeping troops in Cote d'Ivoire into an official UN peacekeeping force.
The ECOWAS soldiers and 4,000 French peacekeeping troops currently patrol the buffer zone between government and rebel forces to enforce a ceasefire declared on 3 May.
Ghanaian Foreign Minister Nana Akuffo Ado told the Security Council that seven West African heads of state had agreed at a meeting in Accra on 11 November that the presence of a robust UN peacekeeping force would contribute greatly to the full implementation of a French-brokered peace agreement signed in January.
The peace deal has been on ice since the rebels, who are officially known as "The New Forces," withdrew from a broad-based government of national reconciliation on 23 September. They pulled out in protest at Gbagbo' s refusal to delegate what they regarded as adequate powers to the cabinet.
Akuffo Ado said West African governments were ready to contribute to a larger peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire with a UN mandate, but they did not have the means to raise such a force alone.
Reuters news agency said France backed the ECOWAS position, but the United States, which foots 27 percent of the bill for all UN peacekeeping activities, was reluctant to see Cote d'Ivoire become another large and expensive UN peackeeping operation like those in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The United Nations still has more than 11,000 soldiers deployed in Sierra Leone and is building up a force of 15,000 peacekeepers in neighbouring Liberia. But so far the UN mission in Cote d'Ivoire is only backed up by 34 military liason officers.
Reuters quoted the US ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, as saying Washington did not rule out the idea of a UN peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire, but it would wait to see Annan's next report on the situation in the country before deciding.
The delegation of West African foreign ministers was due to hold talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell in Washington on Tuesday.
Diplomatic moves aimed at breaking the log jam in the Ivorian peace process meanwhile continued in West Africa.
Rebel leader Guillaume Soro was due to hold talks with Gabonese President Omar Bongo in Libreville on Tuesday, following a three-way encounter between Bongo, Gbagbo and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin in the Gabonese capital last Friday.
Officials in Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso meanwhile confirmed that Gbagbo would meet Bukinabe President Blaise Campaore in Burkina Faso's second city Bobo Dioulasso on Wednesday.
Relations between the two countries have been strained since Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war in September last year.
Gbagbo has repeatedly accused Campaore of supporting the Ivorian rebels. The Burkinabe government has meanwhile hinted that Cote d'Ivoire was behind a coup plot to overthrow Campaore, which was uncovered last month.
Officials in Abidjan said Gbagbo was expected to hold talks with President Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali later in the week.
Themes: (IRIN) Conflict
[ENDS]
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