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Peacekeepers Proposed for Côte d'Ivoire

Business Day (Johannesburg)
NEWS
September 30, 2002
Posted to the web September 30, 2002

By Hugh Nevill
Johannesburg
Senegalese president tells regional leaders that such a force should prevent
fighting rather than quell revolt
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, chief of the 15-state west African
economic community, proposed the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force
yesterday to help resolve the bloody army mutiny in Côte d'Ivoire.
He told an emergency summit of west African states in Accra that the force
should keep the army and mutineers apart to allow mediation to commence.
He said he saw the peacekeepers' role as averting fighting rather than putting
down the revolt.
Wade, who chairs the Economic Community of West African States, (Ecowas) said
he favoured the deployment of a force with contingents from member countries,
suggesting between 150 and 750 soldiers from each.
Wade described the uprising by Ivorian soldiers facing demobilisation as a
"mutiny which incontestably has the aim of destabilising a democratically
elected government", and emphasised the need for a "quick solution".
The Ivorian soldiers rose up on September 19.
They hold the central city of Bouake and a string of towns in the north, but
loyalist soldiers crushed the mutiny in the country's main city, Abidjan, at a
cost of 270 dead and 300 wounded, by government count.
The government described it as an attempted coup d'etat backed by a "rogue
state" in the region, which had sent in mercenaries armed with heavy weapons.
The ruling party newspaper later fingered Blaise Compaore, the president of
neighbouring Burkina Faso, as its "mastermind".
Wade said the allegations needed to be checked out, but noted that when he saw
Compaore and Côte d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo embrace at the summit, "I
knew the problem was elsewhere".
Ghanaian President John Kufuor opened the meeting by likening the Ivorian
crisis to a fire in a neighbour's house, and spoke of the "wasting west African
disease of coups, mutinies and instability".
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo went a step further. "It's like a fire in
one's own house," he said.
He stressed the need for an "amicable and peaceful" solution to the crisis,
calling on his fellow presidents to show "determination, restraint, tolerance
and patience so we can work together, so we can secure a solution that will
work".
President Thabo Mbeki, attending as president of the African Union (AU),
pledged the organisation's support for the summit's deliberations.
"All of Africa looks to us here to find a solution," he said.
Meanwhile, about 180 of about 250 foreigners awaiting evacuation from Côte
d'Ivoire's rebel-held north have been flown to the capital Yamoussoukro in a
rescue operation by French and US soldiers, the French military said yesterday.
The operation began before dawn yesterday to evacuate foreigners from Korhogo
and Ferkessedougou, still held by rebel soldiers 10 days after the outbreak of
the army uprising.
Col Christian Baptiste at armed forces headquarters in Paris said the operation
went "off without any particular problem". He said the evacuation was slightly
marred by a few exchanges of gunfire with rebels taken by surprise.
The operation was the third evacuation of foreigners after French troops
rescued students on Wednesday at a boarding school in Bouake.
In the next two days, French troops helped nearly 2000 foreigners including
French, Americans, Lebanese and a host of Africans to evacuate Bouake, which
serves as the rebels' headquarters.

   

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