UN angers rebel forces in Africa

[Fitz]

Did the UN and France use poor judgement in repairing this aircraft?

news.com.au/story/0,10117,12033112-38195,00.html
Anger at UN aid for air force

From correspondents in Bouake, Ivory Coast
January 24, 2005
From: Agence France-Presse

IVORY Coast’s rebel leader said yesterday a decision to let the Government repair its crippled military aircraft would not help the country’s peace process.

“You can’t talk about disarmament and allow one side to repair and buy weapons,” Guillaume Soro, leader of the rebel New Forces, told a news conference in their stronghold of Bouake.

French forces destroyed or badly damaged the West African country’s small fleet in November after Ivorian jets killed nine French peacekeepers during a bombing raid on the rebel-held north.

A UN spokesman said on Saturday that UN and French troops policing a ceasefire in Ivory Coast had agreed to an Ivorian army request to repair the aircraft, but only on condition they would not be rearmed.

Soro said he viewed the move as a “serious act”.

“While they are saying that he (President Laurent Gbagbo) can repair his planes, they say he cannot arm them. It’s like telling someone he can fish, but can’t eat the fish that he has caught. It’s a rhetoric hard to understand,” he said ahead of a trip to South Africa.

Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa grower, has been split in two since civil war erupted after a failed coup in September 2002.

The crippling of the former French colony’s airforce sparked days of riots by pro-Gbagbo supporters, forcing more than 8000 mainly French nationals to flee the country.

A series of government bombing raids on the north in November broke a ceasefire in place since May 2003, dealing a body blow to an already shaky peace process.

In a weekend statement, the Ivorian army said the decision to bring the damaged aircraft back from the capital Yamoussoukro to the main city Abidjan was in line with an agreement to pull heavy weapons further away from the frontline.

It said this showed its willingness to resume dialogue with the rebels, who have so far refused to disarm saying the government is blocking implementation of a 2003 peace deal.

South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki is trying to break the deadlock and was due to hold talks with Soro yesterday.

Earlier in the day, Mr Mbeki met Ivorian opposition leader Alassane Ouattara and a representative of former President Henri Konan Bedie in Pretoria.

 

[Fitz]

Continued

“December was our last meeting in the Ivory Coast. We drew up a plan of action … we will be reflecting on it,” Mr Mbeki said. He gave no further details.

Mr Ouattara, whose exclusion on nationality grounds from a disputed 2000 election won by Mr Gbagbo is regarded as the catalyst of Ivory Coast’s crisis, did not speak to reporters.

One key issue is whether a change in the constitution allowing Mr Ouattara to run in polls slated for this year should be put to a referendum, as Mr Gbagbo wants. The rebels and opposition parties oppose the idea of a popular vote.

Mr Mbeki’s peace initiative includes asking the Ivorian government to ensure all Mr Gbagbo’s opponents can stand against him in the poll as well as setting new dates for political and disarmament measures outlined in the 2003 accord. Soro said that while disarmament was important, it was not a priority at this stage

 

[Lance]

As usual the French and the UN have succeeded in getting all sides mad at them. The rebels in the north are Muslims mainly from other countries, the French sent in peace keepers to protect foriegn whites but were seen by the government as protecting the rebels.