Peacekeepers move into troubled west

French and West African peacekeeping forces moved into the lawless "Wild West" of Cote d'Ivoire on Friday following an agreement with both government and rebel forces that they should help to restore security in the region. Col. Philippe Perret, the spokesman for France's 4,000 strong military contingent in Cote d'Ivoire, said they had been deployed in two convoys on either side of the ceasefire line that separates government and rebel forces. He said the peacekeepers would create a "zone of confidence" in the region which has suffered from continuing attacks by armed men against the civilian population. Diplomats and relief workers said many of these acts of violence had been perpetrated by poorly disciplined Liberian fighters hired as auxilliaries by both sides in the eight-month old civil war. Last week there was even fighting in the rebel-controlled town of Man. This apparently involved rival factions of the small Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP) rebel movement which has its main base in Man. Perret told IRIN that the peacekeepers would mount regular patrols in an area bounded by the towns of Duekuoe, Man, Danane and Toulepleu "to ensure the protection of the (civilian) population, allow humanitarian agencies and NGO's to operate and in the long term to permit the return of government administrators." He declined to say how many peacekeepers had been deployed in the west, where continuing violence has threatened to destabilise a ceasefire that has been holding well in other parts of the country. However, diplomatic sources said up to 900 French troops and around 60 from the 1,300 strong West African peacekeeping force would be sent there initially. Meanwhile, railway officials hinted at a further delay to the resumption of international services from Abidjan to Ouagadougou, the capital of landlocked Burkina Faso. Thiam Aziz, the chief executive of the French-owned railway company SITARAIL, said the Burkinabe authorities would have to sort out a series of administrative matters, including tax issues, before traffic could resume, even though the track was in good condition and security concerns were well on the way to being resolved. The first freight train from Abidjan to the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire since the civil war began in September last year left on Thursday night, carrying a cargo of fertiliser and cement. Aziz said that in normal times, domestic traffic within Cote d'Ivoire accounted for 74% of freight carried, so trains could resume operating profitably even if the frontier with Burkina Faso remained closed. "The bottom line is that Burkina Faso is not essential for us to balance our books," he said. Burkina Faso, which normally relies on the port of Abidjan to handle 70 percent of its external trade, is keen to see normal traffic resume. So too is Mali, another landlocked country which borders Cote d'Ivoire to the north. Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure flew into Abidjan on Friday for talks with Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo. Cote d'Ivoire's government of national reconciliation, headed by Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, held its first ever cabinet meeting in the rebel capital Bouake on Thursday. The cabinet, which includes nine rebel ministers as well as representatives of opposition parties in parliament, had held all its previous meetings in Abidjan and the country's official capital Yamoussoukro. Both these cities are controlled by government forces. The government-owned newspaper Fraternite Matin on Friday quoted Diarra as saying in Bouake that he would submit a law to parliament granting an amnesty for those who had taken up arms against the government since a failed coup on September 19 pushed the country into civil war. The two sides signed a French-brokered peace agreement in January, but rebels remain in full control of the northern half of the country.