Some rebel ministers return to Abidjan

Several rebel ministers have already returned to Abidjan following Monday's decision by the "New Forces" occuping the north of the country to return to a broad-based government of national reconciliation, government and rebel officials said on Friday. Ahmed Toure, the official spokesman of Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, and Ahmadou Kone, a senior aide of rebel leader Guillaume Soro, said several of the eight rebel ministers who quit the government on 23 September were already back in the capital. However, Toure said the first cabinet meeting at which all nine rebel ministers would be present for the first time in over three months, would not be held until 6 January at the earliest. One rebel minister, Roger Banchi, the Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises, defied the order to walk out in protest at President Laurent Gbagbo's failure to fully implement a peace agreement signed in January. He remained part of the 41-member coalition cabinet throughout the rebel boycott. Kone told IRIN by telephone from the rebel capital Bouake that although many rebel ministers were already back in Abidjan, Soro, who is Minister of Communications, was still "travelling." Diarra, a former civil servant who has been charged with implementing the French-brokered peace agreement and leading Cote d'Ivoire to fresh elections in 2005, said earlier this week that the civil war was costing Cote d'Ivoire US$17 million a day. He told the French daily Liberation in an interview pubished on Wednesday that this was a "a price which no-one can afford right now." The conflict erupted in September 2002, but a ceasefire enforced by French and West African peacekeeping troops has held firm since the beginning of May, despite a rise in tension after the rebels withdrew from government. Diarra, who like the rebels had been frustrated by Gbagbo's earlier refusal to delegate effective power to his government, told Liberation that the president had now given him a free hand to do what was necessary. "President Gbagbo has left me alone to develop my own autonomous strategy without interference," he said.