IVORY COAST: West African leaders ended a crisis summit on Ivory Coast last night pledging to send a military force if mediation between the government and rebels failed.
President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal said the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States would immediately begin negotiations between the two sides.
If that failed, the regional bloc's military wing, ECOMOG, would swing into action, ECOWAS chairman and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said, ending the one-day summit in Ghana.
"We have received the agreement of every (ECOWAS) nation to participate in an ECOMOG force," he said.
Since a failed coup against President Laurent Gbagbo on September 19th, rebels have taken control of large areas of the north and centre of Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer. Hundreds of people have been killed. ECOWAS army chiefs met in Accra as soon as the summit ended. The final communique said a contact group of Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Togo and Guinea-Bissau would mediate.
The group would "establish contact with the insurgents, prevail upon them to immediately cease all hostilities, restore normalcy to the occupied towns and negotiate a general framework for the resolution of the crisis".
One of the rebel commanders, former Ivorian soldier Tuo Fozie, declined to comment on the communique but left the door open to the idea talks with the government.
"If it's in aid of peace, we are ready," he said by telephone from the rebel-held city of Bouake. Earlier Fozie said the rebels would regard foreign intervention as an attempt to deprive them of victory. "If ECOMOG comes here, there won't be peace for 20, 30, 40 years. There must be justice," he had said.
French and US troops meanwhile have evacuated hundreds of foreigners from the opposition stronghold of Korhogo in the north of Ivory Coast. French troops collected the European, American and African foreigners by helicopter and by road from northern towns. They were assembled in Korhogo and flown on a US Air Force transport aircraft to Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast's official capital. - (Reuters, AFP)