IVORY COAST: The South African President, Mr Thabo Mbeki, has taken his peace mission to Ivory Coast's rebel town of Bouake. He was greeted yesterday by tens of thousands of people demanding the resignation of President Laurent Gbagbo.
"We don't want Gbagbo," an excited crowd chanted at the airport as Mr Mbeki shook hands with rebel leader Guillaume Soro while South African military helicopters clattered overheard.
Tens of thousands of people shouting anti-Gbagbo slogans lined the road as Mr Mbeki's convoy edged through the banner-waving crowd to a hotel for talks with rebels on the second leg of his peace mission to the world's top cocoa grower.
Ivory Coast once had a prosperous, vibrant economy driven by cocoa exports and a thriving regional port which was the envy of its West African neighbours, but civil war sparked by an attempt to oust Mr Gbagbo in 2002 has cut the former French colony in two.
African leaders fear West Africa could plunge further into turmoil unless a peaceful solution is found to the crisis in a country bordering Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana.
Local officials in flowing white robes and hunters in traditional dress, some with rifles slung over their backs, lined the tarmac at Bouake airport, where crowds waved tiny Ivorian and South African flags.
With the threat of United Nation's sanctions hanging over individuals on all sides of the conflict, Mr Mbeki managed to wring some concessions from the president on Saturday after talks with Mr Gbagbo in the economic capital and port city of Abidjan.
Mr Gbagbo agreed to propose a change to the constitution which may allow opposition rival Mr Alassane Ouattara to run in elections scheduled for 2005, but he insisted any amendment go to a national referendum before becoming law.
Mr Gbagbo's camp says Mr Ouattara, a former prime minister of Ivory Coast, cannot stand for president under the current constitution because one of his parents was not of Ivorian origin and he has held a passport from Burkina Faso.
Mr Gbagbo's supporters insist the constitution can only be changed through a referendum.
They say a referendum can only be held once the country has been reunited and the rebels, known as the New Forces, have put down their guns.
The New Forces say the latest in a string of peace deals, signed in Ghana's capital Accra in July, states that Mr Gbagbo must use his powers to change the constitution first and then the rebels will disarm. They say Saturday's announcement was another attempt by Mr Gbagbo to stall the peace process.