UN radio station to start broadcasting on Tuesday

A UN radio station which is due to broadcast impartial news and messages of peace and reconciliation throughout Cote d'Ivoire will start broadcasting on Tuesday following two months of delaying tactics by the government, a UN spokesman said on Monday. Jean Victor Nkolo, the official spokesman of the UN Operation in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI), told IRIN that the Abidjan-based radio station, ONUCI FM, would start broadcasting music on Tuesday, following the government's agreement to let it use frequencies reserved for state broadcast Radio Television Ivoirienne (RTI). After a day or two, once the new station had gained an audience, it would start broadcasting a daily news programme and would then work up to two news programmes per day, he added. The UN radio station, which eventually plans to broadcast nationwide through a series of FM relays, had originally hoped to go on air in mid-June. However its launch was delayed by endless bureaucratic wranglings with the Ivorian government while Cote d'Ivoire's faltering peace process remained deadlocked. Following a crisis summit in Accra at the end of July to put the country's January 2003 peace agreement back on track, the authorities finally gave permission at the end of last week for ONUCI FM to start broadcasting on RTI frequencies. Journalists working on the station told IRIN that it soon planned to reach the rebel-held towns of Bouake, Korhogo and Man in the north of Cote d'Ivoire, as well other towns in the government-held south. ONUCI FM would thus become the only radio station broadcasting nationwide in the divided country, since it erupted into civil war in September 2002. Diplomats closely involved in efforts to resolve the conflict have frequently lamented the very partisan nature of Cote d'Ivoire's local media, particularly the country's privately owned newspapers, most of which are closely aligned with particular political interest groups. They have often been accused of whipping up political and ethnic hatred rather than promoting national reconciliation.