Rebel, loyalist military chiefs resume talks

Rebel and army chiefs of divided Cote d'Ivoire have agreed to resume talks on Tuesday in the rebel stronghold Bouake after meeting briefly on Saturday for the first time in eight months. Saturday’s talks between Ivorian army chief of staff Philippe Mangou and rebel military chief Soumaila Bakayoko, in the political capital Yamoussoukro, were aimed at jumpstarting discussions between both forces less than seven months before planned presidential elections. The meetings are an initiative of Prime Minister Charles Banny, who said in an opening address on Saturday he hoped that "all military questions linked to resolving the crisis will be examined without reserve" in future meetings. It has not been disclosed how long the second round of talks will last or whether Prime Minister Banny will attend. Pro-government militia in the south and the New Forces rebel movement holding the north are to put down their weapons before elections scheduled for October 2006 can be held. Cote d’Ivoire, which was once an economic powerhouse of Francophone West Africa, split into a rebel-held north and a loyalist south after a failed coup in September 2002 plunged the country into a civil war. A timetable for disarmament has not yet been made public, and analysts have warned that without disarming the thousands of rebel and pro-government militia in Cote d’Ivoire, recent gains made in the fragile peace process risk being lost. The rebels say their fighters should have nationality documents and voting cards before disarming. They also want their forces to be reinserted into the regular army. The rebels failed to meet several earlier deadlines to hand in their weapons citing President Laurent Gbagbo’s delay in implementing reforms to give four million immigrants from other West African countries greater rights to their own land and to take out Ivorian nationality. Army and rebel leaders officially declared an end to the war in July 2004, but disarmament deadlines came and went without either side handing in as much as a single gun. Mutual trust was shattered when the Ivorian air force broke a ceasefire agreement and bombarded rebel targets in November 2004.