Rail service to resume by end of May

Rail services from the port of Abidjan to landlocked Burkina Faso, interrupted for eight months by the civil war in Cote d'Ivoire, should resume by the end of May, the company which operates the line said on Thursday.

Thiam Aziz, chief executive of the French-owned company SITARAIL, made the announcement as an inspection train returned to Abidjan after a six-day return trip through rebel-held territory to the Burkinabe border.

"With the arrival of this reconnaissance train we have turned over a new leaf in the history of our railway, because a rapid evaluation of damage indicates that freight trains will be able to resume running shortly before the end of May," he told reporters as the deisel engine hauling three flat-top wagons pulled into Abidjan station.

Gontran Guie, the head of the railway workers union agreed. "Apart from the fibre optic telephone cables, which are broken in some places there is not too much damage to the line," he said.

The railway normally carries most of Burkina Faso's imports and exports as well as the oil imports of neighbouring Mali and Niger, but train services have been interrupted on the 638 km of track that runs through Cote d'Ivoire since a civil war broke out last September. The conflict has left rebel forces occupying the northern half of the country.

However, fighting has subsided since President Laurent Gbagbo signed a peace agreement with the rebels at the end of January. This led to a ceasefire and the formation of a government of national reconciliation incorporating rebel representatives last month.

Tension with Burkina Faso, suspected by Gbagbo of supporting the rebels, has eased following the visit of a Burkinabe ministerial delegation to Abidjan last week.

A night-time curfew was lifted throughout Cote d'Ivoire last weekend, although it was reimposed on Tuesday on two troublesome districts in the west of the country, where armed men beyond the control of either side have continued to raid villages and kill farmers.

Col Nestor Djido, a Beninois officer with the five-nation West African peace-keeping force that is helping to monitor the ceasefire, told IRIN on Thursday that government and rebel representatives still planned to meet on Sunday, as planned, in the rebel capital Bouake to begin discussing the process of disarmament.

The resumption of normal rail traffic will be welcomed by SITARAIL's 1,062 employees, most of whom have been laid off without pay since the trains stopped running.