Ethno-Net Database: Côte d'Ivoire

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President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d'Ivoire flies to Paris next week for a long-delayed meeting with his French counterpart Jacques Chirac, to try and move the fragile Ivorian peace process another step forward.

The two men are due to have lunch on Thursday as the UN Security Council ponders whether enough progress has been made towards the implementation of a French-brokered peace agreement to warrant the dispatch of a UN peacekeeping force to oversee the disarmament of rebels occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire.

Diplomats said the United States, displeased by France's criticism of its invasion of Iraq, had so far been reluctant to agree to the recommendation of UN Secretary General Koffi Annan, that 6,240 UN peacekeepers should be sent to the West African country.

But Washington, which foots the bill for 27 percent of all UN peacekeeping operations, has not rejected such a move outright.

The Security Council decided earlier this month that it would consider whether or not to send a force of blue helmets in the light of progress made towards the full implementation of a year-old peace agreement by 4 February.

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin prodded Gbagbo into speeding up the legislation of reforms demanded by the Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement at a meeting in Gabon on 21 November.

Concessions were subsequently made by the Ivorian president to helped persuade the rebels to rejoin a broad-based government of national reconciliation which they had boycotted for three months.

A French embassy source said Villepin would stop off in Abidjan on Sunday on his way to South America to hold further talks with the Ivorian leader before his high-profile trip to France, which was originally scheduled for mid-December.

A tight-lipped official at the Ivorian presidency said Gbagbo would fly to Paris on Tuesday for a visit to "normalise diplomatic relations between the two countries."

Relations between France and its former colony have always been close, but since Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war in September 2002, they have become increasingly fraught.

Cote d'Ivoire is the most prosperous and economically developed country in West Africa and a good part of that wealth is controlled by the large French expatriate community which continues to live there.

However, Gbagbo and his supporters have frequently accused France of supporting the rebel cause in the civil war, even though Paris has deployed 4,000 peacekeeping troops in the country to keep the two sides apart. Supported by 1,400 West African soldiers, they have patrolled a ceasefire that has held firm since May last year.

However, Gbagbo felt that the French-brokered Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement gave too much away to the rebels and until last month he expressed misgivings about implementing it in full.

Anti-French feeling ran particularly high during the period from September to December when the rebels withdrew their ministers from government.

When French radio journalist Jean Helene was shot dead by a uniformed policeman at point blank range in late October, it was widely seen as a symbolic act of revolt against French influence.

Militia-style pro-Gbagbo youth groups, known as "Young Patriots" subsequently staged rowdy demonstrations outside the French military base in Abidjan, urging the French toops go home so that government forces could attack the north.

However, the atmosphere changed after Gbagbo met the rebel military commander, Colonel Soumaila Bakayoko on 4 December and the two men agreed in principle to begin a long delayed process of disarmament.

Since then, the rebels nine ministers have resumed their place at the cabinet table and both sides have withdrawn their heavy artillery from the front line.

And, crucially for improving relations with France, Helene's killer received a 17-year jail sentence for murder from a military court last week.

The scene is now set for a more positive phase of relations to begin between France and its former colony.

And providing the Security Council agrees to send UN peacekeepers to Cote d'Ivoire to bolster the French and West African troops that are already on the ground, the way will be open to move the country's fragile peace process forward.

Heavy shooting broke out in the government-held town of Zouan Hounien on the Liberian border on Thursday, causing hundreds of residents of nearby villages to flee their homes.

Zouan Hounien is close to the front line with rebel forces which control the north of the country. A heavily armed government army garrison is based there.

An IRIN correspondent traveling from rebel to government territory drove through Zouan Hounien on Thursday morning and found the small town quiet and almost deserted.

However, a few km south of Zouan-Hounien, her vehicle was stopped by anxious villagers who wanted to know the cause of 30 minutes of heavy gunfire, which had been heard in the town shortly beforehand. They said this included the explosion of artillery rounds.

For several km to the south the road was littered with groups of people fleeing their villages. Many others were heading into the bush

An Ivorian army commander in the district told IRIN in Abidjan by telephone that disgruntled unpaid soldiers based in Zouan-Hounien were responsible for the shooting, which had been going on intermittently for 24 hours.

The commander, who asked not to be named, stressed that there had not been any attack on the town.

He said the garrison in Zouan-Hounien consisted of heavily armed special forces charged with patrolling the Liberian frontier as well as guarding the frontline with rebel forces.

A spokesman in Abidjan for the 4,000-strong French peacekeeping force in Cote d Ivoire said he also understood that the shooting in Zouan-Hounien was a protest by unpaid government soldiers.

However, French peacekeepers based in the small town of Bin Houye, 20 km south of Zouan Hounien told IRIN they did not know the cause of the gunfire.

Diplomats and relief workers have recently expressed alarm at
persistent reports of fighters of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL) rebel group crossing the border into Cote d Ivoire.

They say MODEL received strong support from the Ivorian government when it emerged as fighting force early last year. Many of its gunmen previously fought in support of government forces in Cote d Ivoire.

Liberia is now at peace and relief workers fear that a large scale return of the MODEL fighters to Cote d Ivoire could further destabilize the already volatile west of the country.

Residents in the rebel-held town of Man said a week-long outbreak of shooting between rival rebel factions in the town only came to an end on Tuesday after a force of 600 fighters was sent in by the rebel leadership from other parts of the north to restore order.

One year after the signing of a French-brokered peace agreement, the fighting has stopped, but Cote d Ivoire remains a country deeply divided and reconciliation remains an elusive ideal yet to be achieved.

Nobody is starving and people and goods move relatively freely between the rebel-controlled north and the rebel-controlled south.

Sanda Kimbimbi the head of the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Cote d Ivoire, told IRIN: We must not forget that one year ago there was still fighting in Cote d Ivoire. That has now stopped and as some kind of stability has resumed so people s tolerance levels have risen .

The Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement was signed on the outskirts of Paris on 24 January 2003 as advancing rebel forces threatened to bring fighting to the streets of the commercial capital Abidjan.

French and West African peacekeeping troops stabilised the frontline and there has been no serious fighting between the two sides since nine rebel ministers joined a broad-based government of national reconciliation in mid April.

However, President Laurent Gbagbo has been slow to implement political reforms demanded by the peace agreement ahead of general elections in October 2005 and the rebels have so far refused to disarm and allow the government to re-establish a civilian administration in the north of the country.

Suspiscion between the two sides remains deep and the security situation tense and sometimes unstable.

The humanitarian challenges of stitching together this once prosperous society torn apart by civil war are still huge.

About one million of Cote d Ivoire s 16 million inhabitants have been displaced from their homes by the fighting which erupted in September 2002.

But since most are living with relatives, either within Cote d Ivoire or neighbouring countries, and very few of them are gathered in formal camps, they remain a largely invisible problem.

International relief agencies have therefore done very little to help these people or the communities which are hosting them.

Francois Landiech, a protection officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said a strong tradition of people giving support to distressed members of their own community had prevented a more serious crisis of internally displaced people(IDP)from developing.

Many IDPs have been hosted within the social group, he said. It is a tradition here in Cote d Ivoire that if a fellow villager turns up on your door, you have to take him in, or you will be dead in the village.

The security situation remains tense, largely because plans to disarm the rebels and take guns away from their child soldiers are already running six months behind schedule.

Diplomats said disarmament is only likely to go ahead in mid-2004 if the United Nations agrees to send a peace-keeping force to Cote d Ivoire.

The problem is that although UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has recommended the dispatch of 6,000 blue helmets to Cote d Ivoire, Washington remains unconvinced of the need to deploy such a force.

The UN Special Envoy to Cote d Ivoire, Albert Tevoedjre, said in an interview with the government newspaper Fraternite Matin, published on Saturday, that the United States, which foots the bill for 27 percent of the UN peacekeeping operations, continued to oppose the dispatch of peacekeepers when the proposal was debated by the UN Security Council in mid-January.

Meanwhile, the militia gangs of of ill-disciplined rebel warlords continue to skirmish with each other in the north, while gunmen throughout the country grow fat from extorting bribes from the drivers and passengers of vehicles at check points.

Guillaume Ngefa Atondoko Andali, a UN human rights officer in Cote d Ivoire, told IRIN that the rule of law had yet to be firmly re-established.

On the government side, court judgments are being compromised. Judges are under pressure, officers detain without attention to the rule of law, Andali said. Check points are a prime opportunity for arrests, humiliation, ransack and extortion.

There, it is lawless. There is no justice. The rule of law is being undertaken by factions - each regional commander is judge, prosecutor and chief, Andali said.

This lack of security makes it difficult for aid agencies to do as much as they would like to improve the living conditions of ordinary people in the north.

In the northern city of Korhogo, four people were killed on Thursday night in a shoot-out between rival factions of rebel militia disputing the ownership of a tanker truck. The incident took place despite the presence of French peacekeepers in the city.

One humanitarian worker who asked not to be identified, remarked: There are advantages to be had from there being no central authority. It means it is very easy to siphon off food distributions for example. That is certainly going on.

In the rebel-held north of Cote d Ivoire, the health and education systems serving roughly four million people virtually collapsed after the outbreak of civil war, along with most of the other administrative services normally provided by government.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) have stepped in to keep some hospitals and health centres running, but relief workers reckon that health services in the north are still only functioning at 30 percent of their normal capacity.

The Ministry of Education is currently organising key exams for those students who were able to attend school in rebel territory last year.

And although there is still no government administration in the north, the ministry is committed to progressively reopen government schools in the north from 3 February.

According to the Education Ministry s own figures, only 250,000 of the 700,000 school pupils in northern Cote d'Ivoire were able to receive some kind of education over the last 16 months.

Schools were damaged and destroyed during the war and at the height of the fighting, some were used as military barracks.

Honore Sehkah, the director of the office of the Education Minister, conceded it would be some time before all schools were reopened.

Meanwhile, ethnic violence between local tribesmen and immigrant settlers in the cocoa and coffee growing belt of southern and western Cote d Ivoire, continues to cause a steady trickle of deaths in government-held territory.

The violence has also led to thousands of settlers being chased or scared off their land in recent months, and this exodus is still continuing.

OCHA said in a statement of Friday that the latest rash of inter-communal clashes near Bangolo, a government-held town near the frontline in western Cote d Ivoire, had led to the killing of 35 villagers since 29 December.

Hundreds of people, mainly settlers from Burkina Faso, have fled their cocoa plantations in the Bangolo area and have turned up at camps in the nearby town of Guiglo seeking shelter and in many cases repatriation.

Those that do decide to abandon Cote d Ivoire, will join 350,000 Burkinabe immigrants who have already fled home since the start of the civil war.

About 100,000 Guineans and 50,000 Malians have also trekked home since the outbreak of conflict unleashed a wave of government persecution against immigrants from other West African countries.

About 30 percent of Cote d Ivoire s population comprised immigrants and their descendents before the start of the conflict.

However, supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo suspect this large sector of the population of sympathising with the rebels. As a result immigrants from other West African countries and their offspring have suffered persistent persecution and harassment by the security forces and militia-style pro-Gbagbo youth organisations.

In rural areas the xenophobia has been exacerbated by the fact that many immigrant farmers do not have well defined property rights to the land they farm.

Relief workers say that it many cases local tribesmen have simply pushed them out to grab their plantations.

In the troubled west of Cote d Ivoire, settlers of the Baoule tribesmen from centre of the country as well as immigrants from Burkina Faso and Mali have been expelled from their land in this way.

On the other hand, many of the estimated half million people internally displaced people within Cote d Ivoire are government supporters, who fled from the north after the rebel takeover.

Many were teachers and civil servants. Relief workers estimate that the rebel capital Bouake has lost between a third and half of its 800,000 population since the war began.

Looking forward, one of the biggest problems to be tackled in Cote d Ivoire will be economic decline and rising unemployment.

Foreign investment has ground to a halt and the production of cocoa Cote d Ivoire s main source of foreign exchange is estimated to have fallen more than 20 percent over the past year

There is rising youth unemployment in the towns and this could have socially explosive consequences. The militia-style pro-Gbagbo youth groups, known as Young Patriots, draw much of their support from the urban unemployed.

In the north, where banks have remained closed since the civil war began, the economy has been crippled by a lack of cash and difficult access to the region s traditional markets for cash crops such as cotton, sugar and mangoes.

Myrta Kaulard, the head of the UN World Food Programme in Cote d Ivoire, said food production levels in the north were generally not so bad. But she warned that rural incomes in the north are falling .

All the routes to markets in the south involve bribes to get the goods through. This has increased the costs for traders who are just pushing the problem onto the producers by paying them less money for their goods, she explained.

The head of one large transport company in Cote d Ivoire told IRIN that truck drivers have to pay an average of US$500 in bribes to road blocks every time they make the 600 km one-way journey from Korhogo to Abidjan.

A military court in Cote d'Ivoire jailed a policeman for 17 years on Thursday for the murder of a French journalist who was shot dead at point blank range while he waited outside police headquarters to interview a group of detainees who were about to be released.

The panel of judges found police sargent Theodore Seri Dago guilty of culpable homicide for shooting dead Jean Helene, the correspondent of Radio France Internationale, on the night of October 21, while he was on guard duty outside police headquarters in Abidjan.

They also fined Seri Dago 500,000 CFA (US$1,000) and ordered the Ivorian government to pay 137 million CFA (US$275,000) in compensation to Helene's family and employers.

Seri Dago was arrested minutes after the unprovoked shooting at point blank range. Presiding judge Hamed Lanzeny Coulibaly said the panel had found him guilty by a majority verdict.

The 17-year sentence imposed on the police sargent after a swift three-day trial was two years more than the 15 years sought by state prosecutor Ange Kessy.

After the sentence was read out in a tense court room, Seri Dago, who pleaded not gulity, yelled from the dock "I am innocent,I am innocent." He has five days in which to appeal against the sentence.

Helene was killed at a time of rising tension in Cote d'Ivoire when the country's fragile peace process looked to be in serious danger of collapse.

Rebels occupying the north of the country had withdrawn from a government of national reconciliation and resentment against France, the former colonial power in Cote d'Ivoire, was growing in the government-held south.

Many hardline supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo openly accused France, which has 4,000 peacekeeping troops in Cote d'Ivoire, of supporting the rebels. France brokered a peace agreement between the government and rebels in January 2003, which Gbagbo was reluctant to accept.

The killing of Jean Helene was widely seen within Cote d'Ivoire as a symbolic strike back against France and was greeted with barely disguised satisfaction by many hardliners.

Gbagbo condemned the killing, while at the same time expressing sympathy with many of his countrymen who felt frustrated by France's role in the civil war. Diplomats privately expressed suspiscions that Seri Dago had not acted alone, but with tacit official encouragement

Guillaume Prigent, a French lawyer for the press freedom watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres, observed the trial and told IRIN that he was satisfied with with the conditions under which it had taken place.

Since the security forces became closely involved in politics after a 1999 coup, soldiers and policemen have acted with increasing impunity from the law. The trial of Helene's killer was seen as a test case for calling them to account for their actions.

Kessy, the state prosecutor, told IRIN shortly before the verdict was announced that the trial of Helene's killer would be followed by six other trials of policemen accused of abusing their powers between now and the end of March.

Soldiers and policemen manning checkpoints have shot dead several bus and taxi drivers who complain that they are constantly stopped and made to pay bribes. Several of these deaths have triggered transport strikes in the capital Abidjan.

Kessy said two of the cases coming to court soon involved the drivers of Gbakas the cheap and crowded 20-seat mini-buses, which provide the backbone of Abidjan's public transport system.

Originally scheduled two days before Christmas, the trial of the suspected killer of French journalist, Jean Helene, opened on Tuesday in the economic capital Abidjan.

The accused, Dago Seri, is the Ivorian police sergent who on 21 October presumably shot at point blank range Helene outside the offices of the poice headquarters. A reporter for French radio station Radio France Internationale, Helene was on assignment, waiting to interview opposition activists who were about to be released.

The trial, which opened around 11 a.m., is presided by a civilian judge and is taking place in a civilian courthouse.

Sources told IRIN that tampers flared as Seri appeared in court and journalists tried to take pictures of him, as an impromptu support group chanted that Dago was innocent.

In 2002, eight members of the Ivorian army were tried for their presumed role in the Yopougon mass crave.

In 2000, on the same day that Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo was sworn in Cote d Ivoire s third president, a mass grave of some 50 bodies of young men was discovered in the northern Abidjan suburb of Yopougon. Evidence pointed to the Ivorian armed forces.

"18 morts pendant que les affrontements ethniques continuent à l'Ouest"

La force française de maintien de la paix en Côte d'Ivoire a invité l'armée et la police du gouvernement à envoyer du renfort pour l'aider à maintenir l'ordre dans l'Ouest agité du pays, mardi, suite aux rapports spécifiant que 18 personnes avaient été tuées en deux semaines de conflits ethniques.

Le Colonel Georges Peillon, le porte-parole officiel de la force française de maintien de la paix, forte de 4,000 hommes, a expliqué que la tension était montée dans les villages autour de la ville de Bangolo, 600 kilomètres au nord-ouest de la capitale Abidjan, où les soldats français avaient trouvé les corps de 18 personnes tuées dans les combats ethniques depuis le 29 décembre.

"Avec le déploiement du contingent des troupes françaises dans plusieurs villes du Nord, nous sommes quelque peu dispersés sur le terrain et ce sera très difficile pour nous de maintenir la sécurité par nos propres moyens si d'autres foyers de tension apparaissaient comme c'est le cas autour de Bangolo," a signalé Peillon à IRIN.

"Nous demandons aux FANCI (l'armée gouvernementale) de nous donner un coup de main," a-t-il ajouté.

Selon Peillon, les forces françaises avaient également demandé à la gendarmerie d'envoyer du renfort dans l'Ouest pour aider à patrouiller dans la région située au sud de la zone démilitarisée, séparant le Sud sous contrôle gouvernemental et les territoires rebelles du Nord.

Bangolo est à l'intérieur de la "Zone de Confiance" démilitarisée, à quelques kilomètres de la ligne de front rebelle, et seules les troupes de maintien de la paix française et ouest-africaines sont autorisées à porter des armes dans le secteur.

Peillon a souligné que les soldats français souhaitaient que les forces de sécurité du gouvernement aident à préserver la sécurité dans les villes et villages situés le long ou près de la route reliant Duékoué, à 45 km au sud de Bangolo, et Toulepleu à la frontière libérienne.

Bien qu'un cessez-le-feu soit fermement respecté dans le reste de la Côte d'Ivoire depuis le 3 mai 2003, des affrontements ont continué près de la frontière libérienne dans une région qui a sombré dans un monde sans foi ni loi. La majorité des conflits ont impliqué des combattants de groupes armés faisant régner la terreur de la machette et des armes à feu, organisés sur la base ethnique.

L'année dernière, plusieurs de ces échauffourées et les raids étaient le fait de bandes indisciplinées de miliciens libériens armés par le gouvernement et les rebelles avant le cessez-le-feu. Cependant, ces derniers mois, la plupart des confrontations sont intervenues entre les villageois de l'ethnie Guéré et les immigrants du Burkina Faso, de Guinée et d'autres ressortissants de Côte d'Ivoire qui cultivent le cacao dans la région.

Plusieurs milliers de ces immigrants ont été chassés de leurs terres où d'autres personnes tentent de moissonner leurs récoltes.

Récemment, un travailleur humanitaire de retour à Abidjan après une mission à l'Ouest, a révélé à IRIN mardi, qu'avec la récolte de cacao de la saison décembre-mars actuellement en pleine fluctuation, le combat pour le contrôle des plantations de cacao battait son plein.

Il a signalé avoir vu les acheteurs de cacao libanais du Libéria s'approvisionner en cacao à prix réduit, aussi bien dans les secteurs gouvernementaux que rebelles de l'Ouest de la Côte d'Ivoire pour faire de la contrebande en Guinée voisine.

Dans l'intervalle, Peillon a averti que la tension régnait toujours dans le Nord du pays, qui a été le théâtre récemment d'une série d'affrontements entre les factions rivales du mouvement rebelle, près des frontières avec le Burkina Faso et le Mali. Environ 300 français de la force de maintien de la paix ont été déployés dans les villes de Korhogo et de Ferkéssédegou en début janvier pour aider à stabiliser la situation.

Peillon a indiqué à IRIN que ces troupes avaient découvert que les rebelles détenaient un nombre indéterminé de prisonniers dans plusieurs containers à Korhogo. Parmi ces prisonniers figurent des Libériens et des supposés infiltrés du gouvernement, a-t-il ajouté.

"Nous découvrons beaucoup de choses pendant le déploiement de nos patrouilles dans le Nord," a-t-il relevé.

President Laurent Gbagbo met rebel leader Guillaume Soro at the presidential palace on Monday night to discuss the way forward in Cote d'Ivoire's fragile peace process following the rebels' return to a broad-based government of national reconciliation.

It was the first meeting between the two men since the rebels, who occupy the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire, withdrew from the cabinet on 23 September in protest at Gbagbo's delays in implementing a French-brokered peace agreement in full.

The rebels, who are officially known as "The New Forces," announced their return to government on 22 December and most of the rebel ministers resumed their seats in the cabinet last week.

However, Soro, who holds the post of Communications Minister, was only due to rejoin the cabinet at its next meeting on Wednesday.

The rebel leader said after his hour-long talk with Gbagbo: "I am here to show Ivorians our determination and our will to make peace and to undertake national reconciliation. But it is up to each one of us to act in all sincerity and openness so that we move towards a durable peace in Cote d'Ivoire,"

Soro, a former student leader, went on to express his disagreement with Gbagbo's plan to hold a referendum on all three key law reforms provided for by the 24 January 2003 Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement.

Only one of these reforms, a constitutional ammendment to make it easier for Ivorians who have a foreign parent, is required by the constitution to be ratified by a referendum.

The other two reforms; a law to make it easier for West African immigrants to Cote d'Ivoire and their offspring to get Ivorian nationality, and a law to make it easier for such immigrants to gain full ownership of the land they farm and hand it on to their heirs, need only be approved by parliament.

However, Gbagbo has used his extensive powers to bypass the legislature and refer the approval of these measures directly to a referendum instead.

Commenting on this move, Soro told reporters: "The government of national reconciliation does not have on its agenda the organisation of several referendums. There is just one referendum which concerns the elegibility to be president of the republic."

Soro added: We think a good re-reading of the Linas-Marcoussis Agreement would allow all the Ivorian political stakeholders to agree that there can not be several referenda.

Before Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war in September 2002, about 26 percent of its 15.3 million people were immigrants from neighbouring Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea and other West African countries or their descendents, according to the official statistics of the 1998 census.

There has been a debate over the right of these people to gain full citizenship rights and assume ownership of the land they till since the early 1990's. Measures taken to restrict these rights in recent years caused sharp divisions in the country that eventually led to civil war.

The issue came to a head when Gbagbo won the 2000 presidential election from which Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister, was excluded. He was barred from standing after the authorities ruled that he had failed to prove that both his parents were Ivorian.

Last week UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council to approve the dispatch of 6,240 UN peacekeepers to Cote d'Ivoire to supervise a disarmament programme later this year and maintain security during the run-up to general elections due in October 2005.

But Annan said the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force should be conditional on both the Gbagbo and the rebels making "sufficient progress" to fully implement the Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement by 4 February.

Albert Tevoedjre, the UN special envoy to Cote d'Ivoire, has hinted publicly that Gbagbo should not insist on a referendum for all three of the proposed law reforms.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has recommended the dispatch of more than 6,000 UN peacekeeping troops to Cote d'Ivoire to disarm former combatants and guarantee security during elections planned for October 2005.

But Annan said in his report to the UN Security Council, which was published over the weekend, that this force should only be sent if President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel forces occupying the north of Cote d Ivoire make sufficient progress towards implementing in full a January 2003 peace agreement between now and 4 February.

Annan praised the two sides for taking steps since the beginning of December to reduce tension and give the faltering peace process fresh impetus.

But he added: There should be no illusions. These are but initial steps in the right direction. The Ivorian parties and their leaders must now proceed to address some fundamental issues in order to ensure that the peace process becomes irreversible.

In particular, Annan urged the two sides to reach final agreement on a series of reforms called for in the French-brokered Linas-Marcoussis peace agreement. These would make it easier for West African immigrants to Cote d Ivoire and Ivorians with foreign parents to obtain full nationality rights, own farm land and run for the presidency.

Annan said it was crucial that the rebels, who are officially known as The New Forces should remain within the broad-based government of national reconciliation charged with implementing the peace agreement until the holding of general elections in October 2005. The rebels withdrew from the coalition cabinet on 23 September in protest at Gbagbo s reluctance to implement the peace agreement in full, but they agreed to return on 22 December following strong diplomatic pressure.

The UN Secretary General said it was also vital for both sides to disband militias and curb the activities of various youth groups.

The latter was an apparent reference to the militia-style hardline youth groups known as Young Patriots, that support Gbagbo . Their violent action against immigrants, opposition newspapers and French peacekeepers has often been tolerated by the government.

Annan recommended that if sufficient progress were made on these issues, the Security Council should dispatch a peacekeeping force of 6,240 men to Cote d Ivoire.

This would incorporate nearly 1,500 West African peacekeeping troops who are already in the country, but would exclude 4,000 French peacekeepers in Cote d'Ivoire, who would work alongside the UN force under separate command.

Albert Tevoedjre, the UN special envoy to Cote d Ivoire, told Radio France Internationale on Sunday that if all went well, the UN force could be deployed between March and June.

Annan stressed that it order for the UN peacekeeping force to be effective, member states would have to provide the required number of troops quickly, along with sufficient equipment to make them fully operational.

The issue of resources is crucial, he said. The Secretariat has recently encountered challengers in securing in a timely manner adequately equipped military contingents and police personnel for United Nations peacekeeping operations, as well as the enabling capacities and force multipliers that allow such military and police deployments to be fully effective.

The UN-supervised disarmament programme in neighbouring Liberia had to be suspended last month, because the UN peacekeeping force in the country had tried to launch the drive with insufficient preparation and too few troops on the ground.

Annan said the UN peacekeeping troops in Cote d Ivoire should be complemented by a UN police mission, whose exact size would be determined by a needs assessment mission that would visit the country in the first half of January.

Considering the sensitive security situation in Abidjan, where militant groups frequently stage violent demonstrations against international personnel, including peacekeepers, it would be necessary to deploy formed police units with crowd control capacity, he said.

Annan said the French government was unwilling for its own troops in Cote d Ivoire to take part in the disarmament, demobilisation and rehabilitation of former combatants in the 16-month old civil war.

Paris was also reluctant to provide security for the elections or become involved in the restructuring of the Ivorian police, he added.

However, France was willing to provide a quick reaction force and attack helicopters to bolster UN troops in the event of trouble breaking out in any part of the country, he added.

The United Nations currently has a team of just over 70 military liaison officers in Cote d Ivoire, whose mandate expires on 4 February.

The number of former combatants to be disarmed at 17 cantonment sites that have already been identified has not yet been officially quantified.

There were 18,500 soldiers in the national army before the outbreak of civil war in September 2002. Some of those defected to the rebels and both sides recruited large numbers of civilians into their ranks during the months that followed.

Last Wednesday, Lieutenant Colonel Christian Rollier, a French army officer in Cote d Ivoire, told the French news agency AFP that he reckoned about 40,000 people would have to be disarmed and demobilised in all.

Six people were killed on Monday in a fresh outbreak of ethnic violence in the troubled west of Cote d'Ivoire, a spokesman for the French peacekeeping force said on Wednesday.

A further sign of continuing tension in the area was the recent arrival of 200 more Burkinabe immigrant farmers in an already overcrowded camp for displaced people in the nearby town of Guiglo, a relief worker in Guiglo told IRIN by telephone.

Colonel Georges Peillon, the spokesman for France's 4,000-strong peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire, said French troops discovered the bodies of six people after they were called to the village of Kahin near the government-held town of Bangolo, close to the frontline with rebel forces that control the north of the country.

Peillon said three of the dead were Burkinabe, two were Guineans and one belonged to the Baoule tribe of central Cote d'Ivoire.

The village of Kahin is mainly inhabited by the Guere tribe, which is native to the area. Since Cote d'Ivoire plunged into civil war in September 2002, there have been repeated ethnic clashes between the Guere and immigrants from other parts of the country and from neighbouring West African states, who have settled in the area to grow cocoa.

This violence has continued despite a ceasefire which has held firm in the rest of the country since last May and despite the presence of large numbers of French peacekeepers in the area.

Peillon quoted the inhabitants of Kahin as saying a group of men armed with machetes and hunting rifles came from the south and attacked the village before dawn. He said they stole two trucks before going on to set fire to two neighbouring villages.

The French military spokesman added that shortly after Christmas two Guere farmers were killed in a similar clash in the nearby village of Bassoukro.

"For the time being, things have calmed down, but French forces have intensified their patrols," Peillon said, adding that ground patrols were being reinforced by helicopters flying overhead.

The relief worker in Guiglo, 75 km south of the area where the clashes were reported, said the latest influx of displaced Burkinabe immigrants had arrived last week from a different area to the west of Guiglo.

He said they had fled from the village of Troya 2 near Blolequin, 70 km west of Guiglo on the road to the Liberian border after rumours earlier in December that Burkinabe in the area where about to come under attack.

Guiglo hosts a camp for several thousand Liberian refugees, but the relief worker said the Burkinabe were being accommodated in a separate camp for people displaced by conflict within Cote d'Ivoire.

This camp had been designed to house up to 2,400 people, but it was now forced to accommodate 3,300, he told IRIN.

IRIN

"Retour des rebelles au gouvernement, Soro absent"

Les rebelles qui occupent le Nord de la Côte d'Ivoire ont participé à leur premier conseil de ministres mardi, depuis qu'ils ont mis fin à un boycott de trois mois du gouvernement de réconciliation nationale à la fin du mois de décembre.

Toutefois, l'événement a été troublé par l'absence du leader des rebelles, Guillaume Soro, qui possède le poste de Ministre de la Communication dans le gouvernement de 41 sièges.

Aucune raison officielle n'a été donnée pour justifier l'absence de Soro du conseil présidé par le Président Laurent Gbagbo.

Les rebelles, officiellement appelés "Forces Nouvelles,” ont quitté le gouvernement le 23 septembre, protestant que Gbagbo traînait les pieds dans l’application stricte d'un accord de paix signé en janvier 2003, sous les auspices de la France.

Neuf portefeuilles ont été attribués aux rebelles, mais un des leurs, Roger Banchi, nommé au poste de Ministre des Petites et Moyennes Entreprises, a ignoré l'ordre de quitter le gouvernement en septembre et est resté en activité. Les huit autres ministres rebelles se sont retirés dans la capitale des Forces Nouvelles, à Bouaké.

Un conseil de quatre heures de temps s'est tenu sous un impressionnant dispositif de sécurité.

Le porte-parole du gouvernement, Patrick Achi, a déclaré quelques heures plus tard à IRIN que les ministres avaient débattu de deux principales lois de réformes indexées dans l'accord de paix de l'année dernière. Ces dernières sont destinées à faciliter aux immigrants des autres pays Ouest-africains l'obtention de la nationalité ivoirienne et la sécurisation de leur droit de propriété sur les terres qu'ils cultivent.

Les immigrants et leurs descendants représentaient 30 % des 16 millions d'habitants de la Côte d'Ivoire avant le déclenchement de la guerre civile en septembre 2002.

Achi a expliqué que le gouvernement a également discuté de la création d'une commission pour l'établissement de nouvelles cartes d'identité.

Depuis le début des années 90, la question de l'identité est devenue une sérieuse pomme de discorde dans le cercle politique ivoirien.

Cette question a atteint son paroxysme en 2000, lorsque Alassane Ouattara, un ancien Premier Ministre et haut fonctionnaire du Fonds Monétaire International, a été disqualifié de la course présidentielle pour des raisons de “nationalité douteuse.”

La Cour Constitutionnel avait stipulé que Ouattara, maintenant un leader de l'opposition en exil, n'avait pas prouvé que ses parents étaient ivoiriens.

Achi a indiqué que le gouvernement continuerait sa session mercredi et jeudi, car Gbagbo souhaitait accélérer les discussions sur la réforme foncière et un amendement constitutionnel qui imposerait des critères de qualification moins rigoureux aux candidats à la présidentielle.

"Des examens scolaires auront lieu en territoire rebelle"

Le gouvernement de Côte d'Ivoire a envoyé des fonctionnaires dans quatre villes du Nord du pays sous contrôle rebelle, pour préparer les examens de milliers d'élèves vivant en territoire rebelle, et qui n'ont pu passer les examens normaux en juin de l'année dernière, ont informé les officiels du Ministère de l'Education lundi.

Le Ministre de l'Education, Michel Amani-N'guessan, a annoncé sur les antennes de la télévision nationale au cours du week-end, que le gouvernement déploierait une “administration minimale” pour préparer le terrain pour environ 46,000 enfants devant passer les examens dans les villes rebelles de Bouaké, Korhogo, Odienné et Man.

Les examens, comprenant l'entrée en sixième, le brevet d'étude secondaire et le non moins important baccalauréat, se dérouleraient entre le 29 janvier et le 6 février, a-t-il ajouté.

La nouvelle année scolaire, qui a déjà commencé en septembre dans la zone gouvernementale au Sud de la Côte d'Ivoire, démarrera officiellement le 3 février, a indiqué le Ministre.

Plusieurs écoles dans le Nord ont été fermées depuis que le pays a été plongé dans la guerre civile en septembre 2002. Certaines ont réussi à continuer tant bien que mal, mais avec souvent un effectif diminué du personnel enseignant.

Des milliers d'enseignants se sont enfuis vers le Sud sous contrôle gouvernemental quelques temps après le début du conflit. Des citoyens ordinaires, soucieux de voir les enfants continuer leur éducation et même des rebelles ont pris leur place devant le tableau.

Cependant plusieurs écoles du Nord ont été complètement fermées et certaines sont devenues des abris pour personnes déplacées.

Selon le Ministère de l'Education, seulement 250,000 des 700,000 élèves de cette région de Côte d'Ivoire ont pu recevoir quelques rudiments d'instruction pendant 15 mois.

Les rebelles, qui ont récemment accepté de rejoindre un gouvernement de large ouverture de réconciliation nationale, qu'ils ont abandonné en septembre, ont déclaré qu'ils coopéraient avec les dispositions d'organiser des examens et obtenir la reprise normale de l'école.

"Nous prenons les mesures nécessaires de sorte que l'administration minimale du gouvernement puisse effectuer son travail", a indiqué par téléphone à IRIN Soumano Dramane, le chef du département de l'éducation des rebelles depuis Bouaké.

Il a expliqué que le gouvernement et les rebelles avaient identifié environ 400 centres d'examens dans les quatre villes du Nord, où les élèves seraient autorisés à passer les examens.

La Banque Mondiale, le donateur principal dans le secteur de l'éducation en Côte d'Ivoire, a exprimé lundi sa joie devant la décision du gouvernement et s'est déclarée prête à soutenir la relance de l'éducation dans le Nord.

En vertu d'un accord de paix, signé en janvier l'année dernière sous les auspices de la France, les rebelles ont donné un accord de principe pour désarmer et permettre au gouvernement de rétablir son administration dans le Nord de la Côte d'Ivoire.

Cependant, les sources diplomatiques indiquent qu'il est peu probable que le désarmement commence avant que les Nations Unies n’accepte de déployer une force de maintien de la paix pour surveiller le processus. Le Conseil de sécurité doit examiner la question plus tard ce mois.

An advance party of 20 French peacekeeping troops has reached the northern towns of Korhogo and Ferkessedougou as the force starts to deploy more widely in the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire, a French military spokesman said on Monday.

The reconnaissance team would hold talks with rebel military commanders to map out the deployment of more French soldiers across northern Cote d Ivoire, Colonel Philippe Aubeton, told IRIN.

They will have contacts with the New Forces in Korhogo and Ferkessedougou with a view to deploying several companies there, with, of course, the agreement of the New Forces , Aubeton said.

The rebels who have occupied the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire since the West African country plunged into civil war 15 months ago, are officially known as "The New Forces.

Most of the 4,000-strong French peacekeeping force has so far been deployed along the frontline that divides the country in half, maintaining a ceasefire that has held firm for the past eight months.

However last month the government and rebel armies agreed a series of confidence-building measures, including the withdrawal of their heavy artillery from the frontline and the removal of dozens of road blocks on main roads. This has reduced tension, allowing the peacekeepers to redeploy some of their troops elsewhere.

Aubeton said the French advance party reached Korhogo, 634 km north of Abidjan, on 1 January, one day after French Defense Minister Michele Aillot-Marie announced that French soldiers would fan out more widely in the north.

Humanitarian agencies should be among the first to benefit from the new French deployment, since the far north of Cote d'Ivoire, like the far west, has seen frequent clashes between rival rebel factions. It has therefore been regarded a dangerous zone for relief workers to operate in.

I admit that we haven t had serious problems, but this deployment of neutral forces will bring security to the minds of humanitarians and assurance to the population , an official of the UN World Food Programme in Korhogo told IRIN by telephone on Monday.

According to Alain Rouy, a liaison officer with the French peacekeeping force, the French soldiers will help to rehabilitate schools, health centres and other public buildings in the north in addition to maintaining security there.

The French peacekeepers are assisted by a 1,400-strong West African peacekeeping force.

The government and rebels are both keen for this to be absorbed into a much larger UN peacekeeping force that would oversee a process of disarmament that has been agreed in principle. The UN Security Council is due to consider proposals for sending a UN peacekeeping force to Cote d'Ivoire later this month.

Awa Michel, a short dark robust woman in her mid 30's, busies herself cooking rice and fish soup over two coal pots outside her house in Cote d'Ivoire's northern city of Korhogo.

She is sitting on a rough wooden bench wearing a simple cloth wrapped over her breasts, not a military uniform, and her AK-47 assault rifle is nowhere in sight.

But Michel is a seasoned Liberian bush fighter who is second in command of the 42-strong mercenary bodyguard of Adama Coulibaly, the Ivorian rebel warlord who controls Korhogo. He is known locally as "Adams."

Michel is loud-mouthed and aggressive in the way she talks and is contemptuous of most men she knows. You can hear her voice a block away.

Michel says she has killed men in combat and was nearly killed herself in early 2003 while fighting alongside Ivorian rebel forces.

Now she guards her boss, smokes marijuana and sells beer and soft drinks from a big fridge inside her air conditioned bedroom of the spacious villa which she shares with several Liberian comrades near the police headquarters in Korhogo.

Like the other Liberian mercenaries in Adams' bodyguard, Michel is given food, but is rarely paid. She would dearly love to go and see her mother who lives in a refugee camp in Guinea. But she doesn't have the money to get there.

This is her story, told to an IRIN correspondent visiting Korhogo as she cooked dinner.

Michel belongs to the Mandingo tribe of northern Liberia. During the early 1990's she and her older brother joined ULIMO-K, a faction in the civil war that was backed by Guinea. It drew most of its support inside Liberia from Mandingos and Muslims.

ULIMO-K eventually allied itself with Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL). Following Taylor's victory in the 1997 presidential election, Michel gained entry into Taylor's elite fighting force, the Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU).

Her brother, "Jungle Jabah", had risen to become a senior commander of ULIMO-K and chose instead to follow the movement's leader, Alhaji Kromah, to the United States.

Mandingos were regarded as being of suspect loyalty within the ATU, so she changed her surname from Jabateh to Michel - the surname of her foster mother - in order to hide her ethnic origins and gain promotion within the force.

Towards the end of 2002, Michel and a group of her ATU colleagues were called to the Executive Mansion in Monrovia where Taylor and his military commander, Benjamin Yeaten, told them they were to be sent on a special mission.

They were to go to Butuo on the Cote d'Ivoire border and cross over to attack Ivorian government forces. Michel said she was surprised but did not dare to question orders. She and her group were told that members of Liberia's Krahn tribe were being attacked in Cote d'Ivoire by government forces so they had to go and help out.

Michel and more than 200 other ATU soldiers traveled overland to the Ivorian border where Sam Bockarie, the former military commander of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel movement, was waiting for them.

Under his orders, they crossed the border to attack the nearby Ivorian town of Bin-Houye and advanced rapidly from there to Zouan-Hounien, and then Danane, a large town near the Liberian border.

Michel said she saw helicopter gunships piloted by white men dropping bombs on towns in the area.

The Bockarie-led ATU force then headed east to help the Ivorian rebels recapture Man, a large city which changed hands several times during the fighting before ending up under rebel control.

The Liberian intervention force fought alongside two small Ivorian rebel movements based in the west of the country; the Ivorian Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP) and the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Great West (MPIGO). Man fell to them after several days of fighting.

Without resting, the Liberians then headed south with the aim of capturing San Pedro, the second largest port in Cote d'Ivoire, from which much of the country's exports of cocoa and timber are shipped.

However, they were soon halted by government forces and a heavy battle for the town of Bangolo, 50 km south of Man, nearly proved fatal for the Liberian female fighter.

A bullet struck her in the back and came out through her left breast. She was seriously wounded, but not quite out of action.

"I killed the white man who shot me," she gloated. "I didn't let him escape. Imagine shooting me and then going Scot free. No way, I deal with that man, I finish him off".

Bockarie entrusted her to the care of an Ivorian warlord called Adams, who took her to hospital in Man. Michel has been with him ever since.

When Adams was forced by a more powerful faction of the rebels to move out of Man at the end of April, she and her Liberian comrades in arms followed him north to Korhogo.

She said Bockarie told Adams "Look after my wife and treat her well. If she dies, you die".

A few weeks later, Bockarie, who was nicknamed Mosquito, because of his ability to strike suddenly and then melt away into the bush, met his own end.

Taylor said Bockarie was killed by Liberian government forces while trying to move back across the border from Cote d'Ivoire with a band of Sierra Leonean mercenaries. But diplomats in Monrovia said he was shot secretly in Monrovia on Taylor's orders after an argument with his boss at the Executive Mansion.

Michel simply says that Bockarie was killed because he ran wild and failed in his mission, which was to put a stop to the killing of Liberians in Cote d'Ivoire.

"Mosquito started killing Liberian people, he was killing them for no reason. He betrayed my people and he paid for his betrayal," she said.

Although Bockarie, a notorious womaniser, refered to Michel as his "wife" when commending her to the care of Adams, Michel said she never had an intimate relationship with the Sierra Leonean mercenary. She is not sentimental about him.

Michel said Bockarie and Felix Doh, the leader of MPIGO who he worked with closely, had both betrayed Taylor. As far as she was concerned that was why they were gunned down in unexplained circumstances within a few days of each other.

"The price of betrayal is death," she said grimly as she stirred her cooking pots.

Master sergent Ousmane Cherif, who is now the military commander of the rebel capital Bouake, was sent to Man in early May 2003 to restore order. But Adams saw the writing on the wall and fled to Korhogo with his Liberian escorts before Cherif arrived at the head of a large force of troops from the largest rebel movement, the Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI).

Their task was to control the volatile situation in Man and Danane and the rest of the "Wild West" of Cote d'Ivoire and deal with the Liberian and Sierra Leonean mercenaries there who were making trouble there.

Before Cherif's arrival and for many weeks afterwards rival rebel factions fought gun battles with each other every night in the streets of the Man and Danane.

But Cherif dealt swiftly with the Liberian and Sierra Leonean mercenaries, who had been accused of committing widespread atrocities against civilians.

Michel said bitterly that Cherif killed many of her Liberian comrades. She has sworn to take revenge against him. "He has to die too, you can't just kill Liberians like that" she said.

After arriving in Korhogo, Adams talked his way into being given command of the armoured batallion that is based there. Michel and 41 other Liberians stuck alongside him.

Now, sitting by her cooking pots while an Ivorian boy pounds onions, tomatoes and peppers into a hot sauce for her fish, Michel talks nostalgically about her mother whom she has not seen for several years.

She lives in a Liberian refugee camp near the town of N'zerekore in Southeastern Guinea. Michel would love to go and visit her, but she cannot as she has no money. None of the Liberians in Korhogo are on a payroll, she said.

They are fed, clothed and housed, and are given just enough pocket money to buy drinks at least once a week in the local bars.

Just before Christmas, 20 of the Liberians were sent to patrol the northern border with Burkina Faso and Mali following a clash between rival rebel factions in the Ivorian border town of Pogo, which left several people dead.

But usually all the mercenaries do is hang around the grounds of Adams' residence, acting as his personal security guards.

Adams basks in the reputation of being the warlord who captured Man. But he refuses to publicly acknowledge the existence of his Liberian mercenaries, who are led by a man nicknamed "Ellis."

Under the terms of an agreement on 4 July 2003, formally ending a state of war in Cote d'Ivoire, the government and rebels both committed themselves to getting rid of any mercenaries remaining in their ranks.

But two senior rebel commanders openly admitted on Friday that Adams was quietly ignoring this requirement.

Fofana Idrissa, the head of rebel security in northern Cote d'Ivoire, known as "Fofie, told IRIN by telephone from Korhogo on Friday: "After the mopping up operations in the West which were aimed at removing all Liberians from our ranks, Adama Coulibaly left Man about four or five months ago with some Liberians who serve as his personal bodyguard."

"Only he knows why he is still surrounded by Liberians because the international community has banned all foreign soldiers from Ivorian soil." he added.

Losseny Fofana, the rebel commander of the western region in Man, also confirmed to IRIN by telephone that Adams was continuing to employ Liberian gunmen. He noted that this was in contravention of orders.

Meanwhile, Michel stirs her pots. She won't have any of her young boy helpers do the cooking for her. "No-one can do it the way I want, no-one is as clean as I am, and the cooking has to be done in a certain way in order to taste right," she said.

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