Rebels blame deserters for reported clash with Guinean army

Cote d’Ivoire’s New Forces rebel movement said on Friday that none of its fighters had been involved in a reported clash with Guinean soldiers on the western border, but it admitted that rebel deserters may have been responsible for the incident.

“If there were clashes with armed men it would have been with uncontrolled elements who have deserted our ranks and who are in neighbouring countries,” Amadou Kone, a top aide of Ivorian rebel leader Guillaume Soro told IRIN.

Reuters and the French news agency AFP both quoted military sources in Cote d'Ivoire and Guinea as reporting that one Ivorian insurgent had been killed in a clash with the Guinean security forces near the border on Thursday.

A police source in the Guinean capital Conakry confirmed to IRIN that an incident had taken place, but he gave no details.

Kone, reached by telephone in the rebel capital Bouake, said New Forces commanders on the ground in the west had reported that all their men were present and accounted for.

“We have no reason to attack Guinea,” he added. “If the country is used as a rear base for (President Laurent) Gbagbo’s militias we will push them back as far as possible. But that is not the case today.”

Diplomats and aid workers say the remote southeastern Forest Region of Guinea which borders Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia, is awash with weaponry and indisciplined bands of armed men.

In the past, the area served as a fertile recruiting ground for mercenaries who fought for different factions in both neighbouring countries.

The Ivorian rebels have observed an uneasy truce with Gbagbo's forces which occupy southern Cote d'Ivoire for the past two years, but rival warlords within the rebel movement have frequently clashed between themselves, particularly in the northern city of Korhogo and the western city of Man.

The rebels have frequently accused Gbagbo of planning to launch an attack on their positions in Western Cote d'Ivoire by infiltrating a force across the border from Guinea with the connivance of Guinean President Lansana Conte.

Pro-Gbagbo militias attacked the rebel frontline position at Logouale in western Cote d'Ivoire on 28 February triggering fears that the world’s top cocoa producer was sliding back into full-scale war.

But last Wednesday the two sides agreed to end all hostilities and complete the implementation of a frozen peace accord at talks in Pretoria mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Many previous deals of this nature have come unstuck. Diplomats are watching to see whether a residual disagreement over who is eligible to stand in presidential elections due in October will be overcome in the next few days, allowing disarmament to proceed as planned.

Some 10,000 UN and French troops monitor a de-militarised buffer zone along the frontline that divides the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire from the government-controlled south.