YAMOUSSOUKRO, Oct 5 (AFP) - Plans for the Ivory Coast government and rebels
to sign a ceasefire Saturday were delayed for lack of a document attesting
that the government's representative had the power to put his name to it.
The ceasefire was originally due to have been signed on Friday, but was
delayed then as both sides studied the fine print of the draft document.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians meanwhile marched in three cities:
in rebel-held Bouake and Korhogo in support of the insurgents, and in
government-held Abidjan to back President Laurent Gbagbo.
The biggest march was in Bouake, a central city which has become the
insurgents' headquarters, where AFP estimated that 200,000 to 300,000
marchers took over a three-kilometre (two-mile) stretch of the main avenue,
shouting slogans against Gbagbo and in support of the rebels.
Two weeks after staging an uprising on September 19, the insurgents
control the entire Muslim-dominated north of the west African country, the
world's biggest cocoa producer, and key towns in the centre.
Mediators, ministers from half a dozen west African nations, flew on
Saturday morning from Abidjan, on the Atlantic coast, to the airport at
Yamoussoukro, the inland capital.
They had been due to go on from there to Tiebissou, a government-held
frontline town 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the north, for the signing
ceremony, but a document attesting that the government signatory,
Lieutenant Colonel Philippe Mangou, had the authority to sign on behalf of
Gbagbo failed to arrive, Malian Foreign Minister Lassana Traore said.
He said that the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), which is overseeing the mediation, would not countenance
"disappointment or discouragement".
"We shall do everything possible to save Ivory Coast," he declared.
Traore said the ministers would contact Gbagbo Saturday evening.
Mediation group sources said that the president, in a telephone
conversation with a fellow west African head of state, had reaffirmed that
government intended to sign the ceasefire, saying he had given "clear
instructions" for the ceremony to go ahead.
The mediators negotiated with government authorities up until just
before their departure from Abidjan, one told AFP.
From Bouake, Master Sergeant Tuho Fozie, who led a rebel delegation
which met the mediators on Thursday, declared contacts with them were
continuing on Saturday.
"We're waiting for the confirmation of the meeting," he told AFP earlier
in the day.
Fozie, who has a 20-year prison sentence hanging over his head -- issued
in absentia early this year for his role in an attempted putsch in 2000 --
expressed confidence Friday in the ECOWAS negotiators.
"For the moment there are no problems," he said. "It's only if we don't
get along with the ECOWAS (team) on certain points of the pact, that there
will be a problem."
The rebels are demanding an end to discrimination against northerners in
what was regarded as west Africa's most stable and prosperous nation before
a coup d'etat on Christmas Eve 1999 ushered in a 10-month military regime.
Political violence has continued sporadically since then.
The insurgents also want the government to rescind plans to demobilise
more than 700 soldiers, with the return from exile and reintegration into
the army of those troops who fled during political violence of the past
three years, as well as the release of soldiers jailed for their part in
the violence.
"My impression is that this government is very responsible and
interested in peace," said Ghanaian Defence Minister Kwame Addo Kufuor, one
of the mediators.
"They (the government and the rebels) have never met before. I hope
there will be sufficient goodwill.
"There must have been reasons for the rebels to have taken up arms," he
added.
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