Curfew ends, railway reopens as ceasefire holds

Cote d'Ivoire's government has lifted the curfew which it imposed in September at the start of a civil war whose wounds are slowly starting to heal. In another move to reduce tension and reunite the rebel-held north with the government-held south, the first train in eight months ran from Abidjan to the rebel capital of Bouake at the weekend. The government unexpectedly abolished the curfew, which in recent weeks had applied from midnight until 6.00am, on Saturday. On the same day, a test train ran from Abidjan to Bouake, 360 km to the north, raising hopes that normal services will soon be resumed to Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire's landlocked neighour to the north. Aziz Thiam, the chief executive of the French-owned railway company SITARAIL, said on Monday the train would continue on to the Burkinabe frontier before returning to Abidjan on Wednesday. But he told IRIN that this trial run would not in itself give the "green light" for a resumption of regular freight and passenger services between the two countries. "We still need a mission report on the trial run and some repair work before traffic can resume", Thiam said. The train's exploratory journey followed a two-day visit to Abidjan by a Burkinabe ministerial delegation last week to discuss ways of normalising trade flows between the two countries. Abidjan has traditionally been the conduit for 70% of Burkina Faso's imports and exports. In recent months these have been diverted instead to ports in Ghana and Togo. An official at the Ivorian tranport ministry said security, which had been a major concern, was no longer an issue following the declaration of a new ceasefire on May 4. Both sides said on Monday that eight days on, the truce was holding up well. The curfew, which at its most severe lasted 11 hours from 7.00pm to 6.00am, was abolished two days after President Laurent Gbagbo, declared that the government no longer considered there to be any "war-zone" in Cote d'Ivoire. Following a peace accord negotiated in France in January, President Gbagbo formed a government of national reconciliation in April led by Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, an independant figure. It includes nine ministers representing the northern rebels and their civilian allies. However, a row continues over who should occupy the key defence and interior ministries and the government in Abidjan has yet to reassert administrative control over the rebel-occupied north. The defence portfolio has been held for the past few weeks on an interim basis by Assoa Adou, the minister for water and forests, a Gbagbo loyalist, and the interior portfolio by Zemoko Fofana, the minister for higher education, who belongs to a small opposition party, linked to former prime minister Alassane Ouatara. Opposition parties in parliament and the rebels in the north have been pressing for the Defence ministry to be handed over to Gaston Ouassenan Kone, a retired army general who held the job in the 1980s under Cote d'Ivoire's first president Felix Houephoet Boigny. However, President Gbagbo's Ivoirian Popular Front party is steadfastly opposed to his appointment. Gbagbo's spokesman, Alain Toussaint, said on Monday: "At Linas-Marcoussis [the French town where the government and rebels signed a peace agreement in January], there was no debate over the distribution of ministerial posts, the agreement does not bear the name of Ouassenan Kone anywhere."