COTE D IVOIRE: South African mediators say laws comply with peace plan, rebels upset

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

DAKAR, 8 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - South African mediators have deemed that laws passed by Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo last month do conform to the country's peace plan, dealing a blow to rebels who had refused to start disarming saying the laws were inadequate.

As part of a plan thrashed out in Pretoria at the end of June to end Cote d'Ivoire's three-year crisis, Gbagbo used special constitutional powers to pass a series of laws dealing with nationality, citizenship rights and the composition of the Independent Electoral Commission.

Rebel leaders were then supposed to start sending their 40,500 fighters to cantonment sites ahead of an eventual handing over of weapons but they failed to do so, saying that Gbagbo's laws were not in keeping with the spirit of the Pretoria deal nor its forerunner, the Linas-Marcoussis accord of 2003.

Opposition parties claimed that the laws, passed without approval by parliament, would restrict the number of people eligible to vote in elections scheduled for 30 October and would limit the powers of the electoral commission to supervise the ballot. They asked the African Union's nominated mediator, South African President Thabo Mbeki, to intervene.

But a South African delegation, including Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, sent in over the weekend judged the laws to be in keeping with the peace process.

"He communicated that as far as the legal experts and the mediation team are concerned, the laws adopted on 15 July are in conformity with Linas-Marcoussis," South Africa's ambassador to Cote d'Ivoire, Dumisani Gwadiso, who was present at the weekend meetings, told IRIN by telephone on Monday.

Cote d'Ivoire has been split into a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north since September 2002, when a failed plot to topple Gbagbo sparked months of civil war. Although the fighting has long since subsided, the country remains tense and little progress has been made towards reunification.

Diplomats speak openly about the difficulties of holding elections in just under three months, given the extreme climate of mistrust that still exists and the fact that the West African country is still awash with weapons.

Rebels were supposed to enter designated cantonment sites on 31 July but those plans were put on ice, and that threw into doubt the 26 September-3 October timeframe for UN peacekeepers to collect the weapons.

The weekend's decision from the South African mediation puts the ball back into the court of the rebel New Forces.

However, their immediate reaction was that nothing had changed as far as relinquishing their weapons was concerned.

"These laws do not conform to the letter and the spirit of Linas-Marcoussis and yet they are asking us to go ahead and disarm. It's not possible," said rebel spokesman Sidiki Konate, expressing his surprise at the mediators' announcement.

"This evening we have put together a list of things that should be taken into account and we will send this directly to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, so that he knows there is a problem with the South African mediation," Konate added.

Meanwhile Gbagbo's spokesman, Desire Tagro, said he was satisfied with the ruling, and stressed that the onus was now on the rebels to keep their side of the bargain.

"We ask the rebels now to not be frightened of peace, and to go and disarm so that we can have elections as scheduled," Tagro told IRIN.

"It's also up to the mediators, the African Union and the UN Security Council to implement the peace process and that process provides for sanctions for those parties that don't respect the accords," he added.

Asked what the mediators planned to do to get the rebels to disarm now that their main objection had been overridden, the South African ambassador Gwadiso declined to go into any detail.

"We have to engage everybody until people understand that there is no alternative to the peace process," he said.

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