AU concerned at persistence of crisis

The African Union has expressed grave concern at the persistence of the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire and the armed incidents which have recently taken place in the western part of the country. In a communiqué issued on Wednesday from its headquarters in Addis Ababa, the AU urged the Ivorian government and the rebel Mouvement Patriotique de Côte d'Ivoire (MPCI) to extend full cooperation to mediation efforts in order to speed up the negotiation process. This, the AU said, should be done with regard for the respect of constitutional legality, unity and territorial integrity of the country, the communiqué issued after the 87th ordinary session of the central organ of the mechanism for conflict prevention, management and resolution at ambassadorial level, said. Commending the efforts of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the mediation by the Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema and other regional efforts, the AU expressed support for the establishment of a liaison office in Cote d'Ivoire's commercial capital, Abidjan, to ensure closer monitoring of the situation. It appealed for funding for the ECOWAS to facilitate rapid deployment of a peacekeeping force in the country. It also welcomed the dispatch to Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Ghana of a delegation from the AU commission on refugees and displaced persons to assess the humanitarian impact of the crisis and to examine the modalities of AU assistance to the affected populations. Meanwhile, a west African summit that was scheduled to take place in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, on 7 December has been postponed, news organisations reported on Thursday. The summit was to examine the modalities for the deployment of an ECOWAS peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire. The force was to replace the French troops who have been monitoring a ceasefire signed on 17 October by MPCI and accepted the government. Radio France International (RFI) reported that the new rebel group - Movement for Peace and Justice (MPJ) - had captured Koro, a town about 20 km north of Touba in western Cote d'Ivoire. Koro, in sugar-producing zone, was captured on Wednesday. While in the western town of Man, which the government said it had retaken from MPJ rebels early this week, BBC quoted eyewitnesses as saying bodies were littered on the streets. "I'm traumatized... There are bodies everywhere," Frenchman Carlos Fardom was quoted by the Associated Press as saying after fleeing the town on Wednesday. "Some people don't want to go out, because the bodies in the streets are decomposing, and it smells bad," a young man called Ndri said. The crisis which had started as a mutiny on 19 September and saw the country divided in two with the south in the government's hand and the north in the hands of MPCI, took a new twist on 28 November with the emergence of two new rebel groups MPJ and Ivorian Populaire Movement of the Great West (MPIGO) who captured four towns in the west.