Talks between rebel and government forces fail

Talks between rebel leaders and Cote d’Ivoire’s army chief of staff on peace-plans to merge the two forces have collapsed, in part because of rebel demands for salary arrears going back to their mutiny. In a statement issued after Thursday’s meeting, the government army chief of staff, General Philippe Mangou, rejected rebel demands as “inappropriate”. Rebels known as the New Forces, who have held the northern half of Cote d’Ivoire since staging a failed coup in September 2002, want to be reintegrated into the national force after peace-sealing polls scheduled to take place in October. The New Forces also want their fighters to maintain their current ranks within the integrated army, and be able to claim salary arrears going back to their mutiny. Thousands of rebel fighters, many of whom were still in military school when they launched their bid to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, have been promoted to the rank of officer by rebel leader Guillaume Soro. “If we promote these [rebel] fighters, we’ll also have to promote those who were in the same class as them,” Mangou told reporters. “We would end up with an army of commanders giving orders to commanders, and with superior officers in the barracks.” Analysts say time is running out to organise presidential elections seen as crucial to restoring peace to the divided nation. Although disarmament of tens of thousands of rebel fighters must be completed before elections can be held, a timetable for disarmament has yet to be made public. And a fresh attempt -- the second in 15 months -- to disarm pro-government militia in the south failed earlier this month as militia leaders refused to show up. The slow-moving pace of the Ivorian peace process and the upcoming deadline of the polls, which were already delayed once last year under a UN-backed peace plan outlined by the African Union (AU), will be discussed at the annual AU summit held this weekend in the Gambian capital Banjul. While in Banjul, UN chief Kofi Annan is expected to host a mini-summit on Cote d’Ivoire. In a statement issued before the summit, the chairman of the ruling Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), Pascal Affi N’Guessan, a close ally of Gbagbo, called on African leaders to “impose a timetable for disarmament” and to “lay out the means to impose it”. Affi N’Guessan also said the African leaders should transfer control of the rebel-held north to the UN peacekeeping mission in Cote d’Ivoire “to facilitate the disarmament operation”. Meanwhile, the UN mission peacekeeping force said it was stepping up patrols in the buffer zone that separates the government area from rebel territory after ethnic clashes in two villages there left nine dead and 12 injured. In other developments, in keeping with a UN resolution issued in October 2005, Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny began a weekend of peace talks with religious leaders and representatives of civil society in the Ivorian capital Yamoussoukro. pb/ss/cs