ABIDJAN, Nov 4 (AFP) - Rebels in Ivory Coast on Monday refused
to resume peace talks aimed at ending more than six weeks of bloody
unrest until their demand for new elections in the west African
state is on the agenda.
"We will not set foot in Lome unless we are allowed to discuss
all our demands," Guillaume Soro, head of the rebels' political
wing, the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement (MPCI), told reporters.
"The primary demand of our supporters is that democratic
elections are organized in Ivory Coast" and that President Laurent
Gbagbo resign, he said.
"We won't rule out going to Lome," he said, referring to the
Togolese capital where peace talks were supposed to resume Monday.
Negotiators met for three days last week, but the talks were put
on hold late Friday after the government agreed in principle to
amnesty for rebels and to reintegrate mutineers into the armed
forces.
Despite that concession, negotiators have yet to broach either
party's main demands -- the government's insistence on rebel
disarmament and rebel calls for new elections.
So far, neither side has appeared willing to budge. During the
weekend break in negotiations, both parties staged massive public
demonstrations to rally their supporters.
Rebels have held the northern half of Ivory Coast since they
began their uprising on September 19, disrupting one of the region's
strongest economies, which produces 40 percent of the world's
cocoa.
UN agencies have warned that the country faces a humanitarian
disaster. At least 400 people have been killed in the uprising,
while at least 200,000 have fled their homes.
Rebels and the government had issued a statement late Thursday
reiterating their support for a ceasefire struck on October 19, a
month to the day after the uprising broke out, and vowing to end
extra-judicial killings and other rights abuses.
But officials from a small opposition party, the Ivorian Popular
Movement, said Monday their leader Emile Tehe had been found
"murdered" on the edge of Banco Forest, on the outskirts of
Abidjan.
Tehe had been arrested by paramilitary gendarmes late Friday,
but his corpse was found Saturday with two bullet wounds in the head
and three in the chest, according to The Patriot newspaper,
considered close to the main opposition Rally of Republicans.
Rebels toughened their talk on Sunday, saying that they would
return to Lome to demand Gbagbo's resignation to clear the way for
elections.
"We're suspicious," Soro said of the talks Sunday.
"We have the means to take up Gbagbo's challenge," Soro told a
rally in Bouake on Sunday, attended by some 25,000 people.
If Gbagbo "abuses the ceasefire, we will go all the way to
Abidjan," Soro said. "If it weren't for the French presence, we
would already be there."
France has deployed troops to monitor the ceasefire, but west
African nations plan to assemble their own force with up to 2,000
soldiers.
However, the region's strongest military power Nigeria has
declined to contribute to the force. Senegal, whose soldiers are
well trained in such missions, is offering only 250 troops despite
ECOWAS requests for more.
Meanwhile both rebel and loyalist forces appear to be
strengthening their firepower.
The rebels said Sunday that they have repaired two attack
airplanes abandoned in Bouake by the armed forces, after witnesses
reported seeing at least one attack helicopter flying near a
military base in Abidjan.
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