Prime Minister to travel to rebel town where mass graves found

Prime Minister Seydou Diarra will lead a high-powered government delegation to the northern rebel-held town of Korhogo this weekend in another move to normalise relations between the two halves of divided Cote d'Ivoire, government and rebel officials said on Friday Korhogo, 630 km north of the capital Abidjan, is the second largest city in the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire. UN investigators recently uncovered mass graves in Korhogo containing at least 99 bodies, following bloody clashes between rival factions of the rebel movement there in June. Diarra's visit to Korhogo will be the first by a government delegation to the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire since a West African summit in Accra at the end of July ended five months of political deadlock. Saturday's trip has been billed as a peace-building measure that will give the government a chance to take stock of conditions in the city before the planned return of government administrators, teachers and medical staff. A spokesman for Diarra, the politically neutral head of Cote d'Ivoire's power-sharing government, and rebel sources in Korhogo said the prime minister would be accompanied by at least three other ministers and possibly as many as 10. Diarra's spokesman said the delegation would include Finance Minister Paul Bohoun-Bouabre, a key ally of President Laurent Gbagbo, and Guillaume Soro, leader of the 'New Forces' rebel movement, who is Communications Minister. Gbagbo sacked Soro and two other ministers in May, but readmitted them to the cabinet earlier this week, in line with the terms of the Accra agreement hammered out in July. The Accra accord led to the reconvening of the government of national reconciliation this week for the first time since 26 ministers representing the rebels and the four main opposition parties in parliament walked out in March. Gbagbo met with the full cabinet on Monday and again on Thursday to prepare the legislation of political reforms that are due to clear the way for the rebels to start disarming on 15 October. He also signed a decree officially delegating key executive powers to Diarra, who in the past has complained of having government decisions overturned by the president. Korhogo in the headlines Korhogo was one of the first big cities to fall to the rebels when the civil war erupted in September 2002. It hit the headlines again in June this year when forces loyal to Soro clashed with supporters of Ibrahim Coulibaly, a hero in exile who is widely seen as a challenger for the rebel leadership. Soro's supporters said he had survived an assassination attempt by forces loyal to Coulibaly, who is more commonly known as “IB.” Last week a team of human rights experts from the UN Mission in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI) said it had found three mass graves containing at least 99 bodies during the course of its investigation into these clashes. One source close to the probe told IRIN that beneath the bodies of recently-killed people, the UN investigators found two more layers of decomposing bodies which they were unable to count. ONUCI has still to publish the official report of the Korhogo investigation. The rebel leadership, which reported only 22 dead in the June clashes, has refused comment until it comes out. A draft leaked to the media this week said some of the victims had been beheaded and at least 60 people had died of suffocation after being crammed into a sun-baked transport container with no air vents, that was occasionally sprayed with teargas. Foreign military observers of the Ivorian conflict, rebel sources and Korhogo residents all told IRIN this week that they expected further trouble in the city, especially now that IB, banned from leaving France for the past 12 months, has now been cleared to travel. The former army sergeant who helped to mastermind a successful 1999 coup in Cote d'Ivoire, was detained in France in August 2003 on suspicion of plotting to destabilise the Ivorian government with the help of mercenaries. He was released three weeks later, but was prohibited from leaving France until last week. One UN military observer predicted there would be no peace within the rebel camp until the internal bickering between Soro and IB came to an end. Residents in Korhogo said people in the town were reluctant to talk openly about the recent fighting there for fear of reprisals. The city's commercial radio station, which keeps well clear of contentious political issues unless asked to broadcast statements by the rebel leadership, has not so far mentioned the discovery of mass graves. One resident in the city told IRIN he was worried that this uneasy climate could affect the work of a new UN human rights commission which is investigating abuses committed between the start of the civil war in September 2002 and the signing of a French-brokered peace agreement in January 2003. This team is currently in Korhogo, where it has urged local people to come forward with testimony. Some 4,000 French troops and a UN force, that will eventually number 6,240, currently patrol the ceasefire line between the government-controlled south and the rebel-held north.