Military tension eases, but no disarmament yet

The government army and rebel forces occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire began dismantling some checkpoints at the weekend and withdrawing their heavy artillery from the frontline. But Monday's deadline set by President Laurent Gbagbo for the start of disarmament came and went without either side surrendering a single gun. The long delayed process of disarmement, demobilisation and rehabilitation (DDR)is expected to take several months once it finally gets under way, but a senior United Nations official said on Monday that Cote d'Ivoire was still in a "pre-DDR" phase. There were still many unresolved issues before the costly and complex process could get under way, he added. Diplomatic sources said the Ivorian government had asked donors for $90 million to finance the demobilisation and disarmament of an estimated 30,000 rebel fighters and the confinement of the government army to its barracks. But the sources said that sum appeared to be rather on the high side. The UN peacekeeping force in Liberia has budgeted US$ 50 million to disarm an estimated 38,000 combatants. The military commander of the northern rebels, Colonel Soumaila Bakayoko, and a senior commander of the government army both told IRIN that since Saturday their men had begun to remove checkpoints and store weapons that were not in active service in their respective barracks. The process is due to continue until Christmas Day. On 26 December, a joint team of UN military liason officers and West African peacekeepers is due to tour the country to verify the process. However, a frequent traveller who drove from the rebel capital Bouake to Korhogo near the northern border with Burkina Faso on Sunday told IRIN by telephone there were more rebel checkpoints along the main road than ever before. Gbagbo announced after a meeting with Bakayoko in the official capital Yamoussoukro on 4 December that both sides had agreed to begin disarmament on 15 December and that very soon he would visit Bouake to declare the civil war finally over. But Colonel George Peillon, the spokesman of France's 4,000-strong peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire, said on Monday that 15 December was just a “symbolic date”. The UN official said disarmament, in the true sense of the word, was still months away. One diplomat said that if the positive momentum of the last few days kept up, the next question would be “where is the money?” And despite recent moves to reduce military tension, distrust between Gbagbo and the rebels, who are officially known as "The New Forces," remains deep. The rebels withdrew from a broad-based government of national reconciliation at the end of September claiming that Gbagbo was failing to implement in full a peace accord signed in January. And despite international pressure for them to resume their eight abandoned ministerial posts, they have yet to do so. On Monday, Lansana Kouyate, a Guinean diplomat and former executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), travelled to Bouake to add further pressure on the rebels to return to the cabinet. “We appreciated the exchange because he did not come with pre-conceived decisions”, Amadou Kone, a senior rebel official, told IRIN by telephone from Bouake after the meeting. “Our return to government will depend on the responses given to the documents we handed to the Monitoring Committee on Wednesday,” he added. The UN-led Monitoring Committee includes represetnatitves of ECOWAS, France, the European Union and other international partners. It was set up to oversee implementation of the French-brokered peace agreement, which in recent months has been in danger of breaking down.