ABIDJAN, Nov 11 (AFP) - French, South African and Bulgarian
mercenaries have arrived in Ivory Coast to help the army counter a
rebellion that has split the west African country in two, government
sources admitted here Monday.
They said the 50 odd mercenaries are mainly helicopter pilots
who have been hired to teach the army to handle new equipment it has
acquired since the start of the uprising on September 19.
"The mercenaries we have employed are instructors who have to
teach the Ivorian soldiers how to use new arms we have received for
our war effort," a source close to President Laurent Gbagbo's regime
told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"We do not see them going into combat alongside our troops. They
are meant to help organise the military and to take care of certain
security issues," he added.
An analyst at the Institute of Security Studies in Pretoria said
in late October that about 40 mercenaries, some of them South
Africans, had arrived in Ivory Coast to help the army, and that 160
would soon follow.
But Gbagbo's aides at the time dismissed this as rumours.
A high-ranking officer in the Ivory Coast army on Monday
confirmed the mercenaries' presence in the country but was indignant
at any suggestion that they would fight alongside Ivorian soldiers.
"It would be humiliating for us. We will never allow the
government to deploy mercenaries to fight in this war. The only
foreigners we will accept, are flight teams for the combat
helicopters we have just received," he said.
Air force sources said the hired helicopter pilots are mainly
Bulgarian.
They will work with three Russian-made Mi-24 Hind helicopters
recently acquired by the government and two Mi-8 carrier
helicopters.
Witnesses last week spotted the Mi-24 flying over Bassam, 40
kilometres (25 miles) from Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan, and
firing practice rounds.
The mercenaries are reported to be staying in hotels in Abidjan
since their arrival in the country at the end of October.
According to intelligence sources, some of the mercenaries work
for Sandline International, a company which says on its Internet
website it provides "military services" and operated in Sierra Leone
in 1998 and in Papua New Guinea in 1997.
The sources said its men were due to train Ivorian soldiers to
use recently acquired Russian-made weapons and vehicles, including
heavy machine guns and armoured personnel carriers.
The Ivory Coast crisis, the worst since independence in 1960,
has claimed 400 lives. A ceasefire was signed in October but
setbacks in peacetalks have raised fears of more fighting.
The rebels who have taken control of the northern half of the
country claim that the government has hired nine French mercenaries
and that some of them used to be close to legendary soldier of
fortune Bob Denard.
Denard, now 75, is known for his involvement in the Comoros
Islands and in the then Biafra and Zaire in the 1960s to 1980s.
Intelligence sources said the French mercenaries in Ivory Coast
are led by Dominique Malacrino, 49, who the rebels also mention on
the website of their political wing, the Ivory Coast Patriotic
Movement (MPCI).
Malacrino, who is known as "Commandant Marquez", was accused of
the 1998 murder of Ahmed Abdallah, a former president of the
Comoros, but was acquitted by a French court the following year.
Members of his team are suspected of involved in mercenary
missions in Brazzaville and Madagascar earlier this year.
The South African government last month said it has asked its
diplomats in Ivory Coast to look into reports that there are South
African mercenaries the country.
During the apartheid era, South Africa was a well-known source
mercenaries, but in 1998 the government adopted a law banning all
mercenary activity.
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