UN names Swedish diplomat as special envoy

Pierre Schori, a veteran Swedish politician and diplomat with experience of monitoring elections in Africa, has been named as the new UN special envoy to Cote d'Ivoire. He will replace Albert Tevoedjre of Benin, who quit at the end of January after two years of fruitless attempts to implement a French-brokered peace deal to end the country's civil war. The United Nations said in a statement on Monday that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had nominated Schori to be his Special Representative in Cote d'Ivoire which would put him in charge of the 6,240-strong UN peacekeeping force. The appointment now has to be rubber-stamped by the 15-member UN Security Council. Swedish radio said Schori, 66, was expected to take up his new post on 1 April. Schori, who until last year was Sweden's permanent representative to the United Nations, was chosen for the key job as international efforts to revive the 2003 peace deal between President Laurent Gbagbo and rebels occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire hit a new low. A pro-government militia force attacked the rebel-held town of Logouale on the frontline on Monday, prompting the intervention of UN and French peacekeepers to restore order. They subsequently arrested 87 of the attackers. The rebel New Forces movement said after the attack that a four-month mediation drive by South African President Thabo Mbeki, which was already running out steam, had now been killed off completely. Schori, who served as Sweden's deputy foreign minister and as deputy leader of the socialist group in the European Parliament during the 1990s, will face a tough job in persuading the rebels to disarm in time to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on schedule in October. He will face an equally difficult task in persuading Gbagbo to cede real power to the country's broad-based government of national reconciliation so as to win the confidence of the rebels and parliamentary opposition parties. But Schori has previous experience of difficult elections in Africa, having led the European Union's observer mission to monitor Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections in 2000 and presidential polls in 2002. On the latter occasion, President Robert Mugabe's government tried to make him leave the country by shortening the duration of his visa.