ECOWAS to hold summit on Ivorian conflict

Heads of state of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are to meet on Wednesday in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to seek ways to help resolve the Ivorian conflict. The decision to hold the summit capped an hours-long meeting on Monday in the northern Togolese town of Kara between the presidents of Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal and Togo, and delegations representing Cote d'Ivoire's government and rebels. The meeting's final communique stated that the two sides had received "a balanced draft agreement which should satisfy both parties". Monday's informal mini-summit also reaffirmed the need to deploy ECOWAS troops to monitor a 17 October ceasefire agreement. The deployment of the troops is already weeks behind schedule. The leaders repeated an earlier condemnation of the use of force, called on the rebels of the Mouvement Patriotique de Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI) to free all areas they occupy, and announced that they had requested the African Commission on Human Rights to shed light on all rights violations committed since the beginning of the conflict on 19 September. The West African leaders urged the government of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo to implement as quickly as possible the resolutions of a national reconciliation forum in Cote d'Ivoire which, in December 2001, had proposed 14 recommendations to end years of socio-political turmoil that began after the death in December 1993 of the country's first president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny. The forum, at which social and political forces aired their grievances, ran from October to December 2001. According to the communique, a committee would be set up under the auspices of ECOWAS to monitor the implementation of the resolutions. The Kara mini-summit came amid ongoing efforts to contain the crisis, which has taken a regional dimension. Over the weekend, France beefed up its military presence in Cote d'Ivoire by sending about 100 paratroopers. These were the first of about 500 additional troops who will reinforce the some 1,200 already in the country. The mandate of the force has also changed as, according to French military sources, the troops have been instructed to enforce the ceasefire rather than just monitor it. They have also been mandated to use their weapons if they are witness to "mass exactions", according to French officials. France has also proposed to host a high-level meeting of West African states in Paris, along with a meeting of Ivorian political parties. On the humanitarian front, the World Food Programme reported on Friday that a large number of people displaced from western towns that saw fighting between two new rebel groups and the national army had arrived in the capital, Yamoussoukro, during last week. WFP and UNHCR planned to conduct a humanitarian assessment mission there this week.