War of words fails to derail peace process

President Laurent Gbagbo urged his supporters to mobilise against rebels occupying the north of the country at the weekend after the rebels accused him of arbitrarily imposing candidates of his own choice on the key ministries of defence and internal security. But the country's broad-based government of national reconciliation said on Monday that this war of words would not derail the peace process. A spokesman for Prime Minister Seydou Diarra told IRIN the agreement signed in January to end a civil war that broke out a year ago was still "on the rails" and the way was now clear for the rebel forces to begin disarming soon. "They have quarelled over procedures, but at our level the process is still right on track," he said. Gbagbo named Rene Amani, a political independent and former head of the government agency which controlled cocoa prices as Defence Minister early on Saturday morning. He also named Martin Bleou, a law professor and human rights activist as Minister of Internal Security. The appointments followed several hours of hard bargaining with the rebels and opposition parties, during which the president made a number of last minute concessions on other issues. The ministerial posts had been vacant since Diarra's coalition government was appointed in March, because Gbagbo had rejected all previous candidates suggested to him by the prime minister. According to the terms of the peace agreement, the ministers were due to be chosen by consensus. Signs of trouble appeared on Saturday when the rebel Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire, issued a statement protesting at the way the new ministers had been chosen. Colonel Soumaila Bakayoko, the MPCI's military chief of staff, said "The armed forces of the New Forces do not identify themselves with the people chosen in this way." But he stopped short of rejecting the new ministers outright. And Alain Logongnon, the MPCI's spokesman in Abidjan, told IRIN on Monday that the rebels were still open to dialogue. "If the contrary were true, we would all go back to our bases in the zones we control," he said. Gbagbo responded to the MPCI's complaints by urging his supporters to mobilise against the rebels, whom he described as "sorcerer's apprentices." "I urge Ivorians to clean their weapons and take courage," the president said in an inflamatory speech on Sunday. "The war is not over....I want you to be imaginative and create all sorts of ways of protesting. We want no more rebellion," he added. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has 1,300 peacekeeping troops stationed in Cote d'Ivore, urged both sides to cool it. "The situation has not evolved as it should have done," he said. "Ivorian politicians have been making inappropriate statements." A university professor in Abidjan told IRIN that the latest round of mud-slinging between Gbagbo and the rebels did not mean that moves to disarm the rebels and restore government rule to the north of the country had struck a fresh obstacle. "Opinions agree that there has been an advance in the peace process, despite this rejection of procedure by the rebels," he said. Meanwhile, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie arrived in Cote d'Ivoire at the weekend to visit 4,000 French peace-keeping troops stationed in the country and hold talks with the government. On Sunday she announced plans to deploy some of the French peacekeepers in the rebel-held far north of Cote d'Ivoire near the border with Burkina Faso. This contingent is due to be based at Korhogo, 634 km north of Abidjan, a town whose rebel commander is notorious for disregarding orders from his high command. Most of the French and West African peacekeepers are deployed along a demilitarised "zone of confidence" that cuts across central Cote d'Ivoire, separating the government and rebel