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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs |
COTE D IVOIRE: Rebels, opposition slam Gbagbo
BOUAKE, 18 Aug 2006 (IRIN) - Leaders of Cote d’Ivoire’s main opposition parties and the rebel New Forces movement have issued a joint statement slamming President Laurent Gbagbo for hindering efforts to keep the war-divided country’s peace process on track.
The groups met in the central town of Daoukro to discuss a speech by Gbagbo earlier this month in which he said he would remain in office beyond his mandate if peace-sealing elections failed to take place as scheduled on 31 October. Cote d’Ivoire has been divided between a rebel north and government-controlled south for almost four years.
The groups said at the meeting that they “reject all idea of an extension of President Laurent Gbagbo’s mandate beyond 30 October 2006”.
Under United Nations resolution 1633, Gbagbo’s original five-year mandate was prolonged for 12 months last year until the 2006 polls could be held. But there is little chance of the election taking place on schedule due to hiccups in disarmament efforts as well as problems in a countrywide scheme to hand out ID cards to millions of people ahead of the polls.
New Forces leader Guillaume Soro and ex-prime minister Alassane Outtara were among those at the meeting held at the home of ex-president Henri Konan Bedie.
The participants also rejected a new set of rules issued by the authorities on how to issue ID papers to some three million undocumented residents. The issue of nationality is at the heart of the Ivorian conflict and will determine who among the population of 16 million has the right to vote. The opposition claims Gbagbo is changing the rules midway through the process.
“Difficulties are being created to recreate a problem where there should be none,” Alphonse Djedje Mady, president of the opposition Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace, told Radio France Internationale. Felix Houphouet-Boigny was Cote d'Ivoire's post-colonial founding president.
“I do not understand how a head of state can launch a process which is ongoing and which has been under way after tests approved by himself," Mady said. "And then, during the process, he suddenly remembers that we cannot proceed like this, we have to change things. And he changes things just like that.”
“We find that his desire not to go to the elections is very clear,” he said. “His main concern is to remain in power, with or without elections.”
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This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2006
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