Burkina gov't accuses Ivorian planes of illegal overflights

The government of Burkina Faso has accused Cote d'Ivoire of violating its airspace with illegal overflights by both military and civilian aircraft and has hinted that it may shoot down any further intruders. The Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that Ivorian planes had repeatedly flown over south-western Burkina Faso starting in January this year and that the Burkinabe government had "strongly protested against such acts" to the authorities in Abidjan. Burkina Faso had informed the Ivorian government that it would use all options "including the most extreme" to protect its airspace, the statement said. The Ivorian government immediately denied its planes had strayed over the northern border with Burkina Faso, but admitted that other unauthorised aircraft might have been responsible for the overflights. "The defence and security forces cannot allow themselves to violate the territory of a neighbouring country. If aircraft have appeared over Burkina Faso, there is no way that they could have been Ivorian military planes," said Colonel Jules Yao-Yao, the official spokesman for Cote d'Ivoire's armed forces. Defence Minister Rene Amany also denied that Ivorian planes were involved. Press aides to President Laurent Gbagbo declined to comment on the allegations. The northern half of Cote d'Ivoire, which borders Burkina Faso, has been controlled by rebel forces since civil war broke out nearly two years ago. Relations between the governments in Abidjan and Ouagadougou have been strained since then. The Ivorian government has repeatedly accused Burkina Faso of supporting the rebels and the start of the conflict was marked by a series of attacks by Ivorian government supporters on immigrants from Burkina Faso and other West African countries. This led to an exodus of over half a million people from Cote d'Ivoire, including an estimated 350,000 Burkinabe immigrants who returned home. The rebel movement in Cote d'Ivoire, which has no planes of its own, said it was investigating the Burkinabe accusations of illegal overflights by Ivorian aircraft. But the rebels said they had no evidence so far that any such overflights had taken place. "Sometimes planes can fly really high. We hear them but we can't see them," Amadou Kone, a senior aide to rebel leader Guillaume Soro told IRIN. "If we had seen any flights we would have raised the alarm," he added. One European diplomat in Abidjan said the very idea of Ivorian government planes making deliberate incursions into Burkinabe air space was improbable. "It is a set-up. Cote d'Ivoire flies over Burkina Faso. To do what?" he said. However, the diplomatic spat is the latest sign that relations between the two countries remain at rock bottom. Two weeks ago, the Foreign Ministry summoned Cote d'Ivoire's ambassador in Ouagadougou to lodge a protest at the continuing mistreatment of Burkinabe immigrants in Cote d'Ivoire. Residents in Abidjan say Burkinabe and other West African immigrants are systematically harassed by the security forces who prey on them to extract bribes. Landlocked Burkina Faso once relied on road and rail links to the port of Abidjan to conduct 70 percent of its external trade. However, since the civil war broke out in Cote d'Ivoire, most of this has been redirected to ports in Ghana, Togo and Benin.