COTE D IVOIRE: More UN troops urgently needed says rights group

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ABIDJAN, 3 May 2005 (IRIN) - With 24 hours to go before the UN Security Council meets to discuss peacekeeping needs in Cote d'Ivoire, a human rights group said that more troops needed to be urgently sent into the divided country, which is shuffling along the path to peace.

In a report published on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch called for an immediate reinforcement of the UN mission in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI), warning that if the fragile peace process breaks down, "attacks against civilians could set off a sudden spiral of human rights abuses that would be difficult to control".

"The blue helmets are too thinly spread and lightly equipped to deal with multiple attacks accompanied by civil unrest or communal violence," the group's Africa director Peter Takirambudde said. "The Security Council must approve the reinforcements without delay."

Shortly after a wave of riots in November, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan declared that ONUCI was seriously "overstretched" and asked the Security Council to send in attack helicopters and an extra 1,226 UN peacekeepers.

Annan reiterated his demand in March, but Human Rights Watch said the United States was opposing the request for budgetary reasons.

After being renewed for a month in April, the mandate for 6,000 UN and 4,000 French peacekeepers is set to expire on Wednesday.

Diplomats say that France, the former colonial power in Cote d'Ivoire, has proposed another one month extension until 4 June to give the UN more time to consider reinforcing the troops and to look at putting a monitoring system in place for presidential elections, due to be held on 30 October.

Some UN officials said even more troops were needed to help the government with the disarmament of armed militias in the government-run south and rebels in the north.

"If we have to help with disarmament and maybe even with the electoral process, 1,200 additional troops are better than nothing, but not enough," one UN military observer told IRIN on condition of anonymity.

Agence France Presse reported that France had suggested sending in 2,000 extra peacekeepers.

Rebel and army chiefs began a four-day meeting in the official capital Yamoussoukro on Tuesday, where they will discuss a proposal by the national disarmament commission to start handing over their weapons on 14 May and wrap up the process by 31 July.

"Keep in mind that the entire country, your country, is hoping for a liberating result from you," said Pierre Schori, the United Nations special representative for Ivory Coast.

Human Rights Watch said in its 35-page report that the situation in Cote d'Ivoire remained precarious as the army and armed militias continued to act with impunity and ethnic tension kept simmering in notably the cocoa-growing region and towns like Gagnoa, Guiglo and Logouale.

Despite the presence of UN troops, civilians, and immigrant farmers in particular, remained unprotected from human rights abuses, the watchdog said.

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