Cote d'Ivoire Peace Talks Open in Paris

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, January 16, 2003

Cote d'Ivoire Peace Talks Open in Paris

French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Wednesday opened the Cote d'Ivoire peace talks in Paris aimed at ending four months of conflicts that has split the west African country into two.

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French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Wednesday opened the Cote d'Ivoire peace talks in Paris aimed at ending four months of conflicts that has split the west African country into two.

"France, the host country, is here to give you its support," de Villepin said to various delegations assembling at the Kleber conference center for the start of the talks, expected to last until Jan. 24.

Following the opening of the peace talks in downtown Paris, delegates of the principal political parties and three rebel groups will continue their talks behind closed doors at a national rugby training center 35 kilometers south of Paris.

Cote d'Ivoire Prime Minister Pascal Affi N'Guessan, who is also head of the ruling party of Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), took part in the talks as the representative of President Laurent Gbagbo.

Former prime minister Alassane Ouattara, currently in exile in France, attended as head of the opposing Rally of Republicans (FDR).

The Democratic Party of Cote d'Ivoire (PDCI) and the Union for Democracy and Peace in Cote d'Ivoire (UDPCI) also have delegates at the talks.

The PDCI, founded by the country's first president Felix Houphouet-Boigny, was represented by Houphouet-Boigny's successor Henri Konan Bedie, who was toppled in a coup in December 1999 by general Robert Guei.

Guei, who banned Ouattara from the presidential election in 2000 on the grounds of his foreign parentage, was then replaced by Gbagbo following a popular uprising for trying to rig the election results.

The UDPCI was founded in 2001 to back Guei, who was killed under mysterious circumstances in Abidjan on the first day of the uprising last year.

The UDPCI was represented by Paul Yao Akoto, a former ambassador to South Africa and former education minister.

On the rebel side, Guillaume Soro, secretary general of the Cote d'Ivoire Patriotic Movement (MPCI), joined the talks. The MPCI is a main rebel group that has held the northern half of the country since the Sept. 19 rebellion in last year.

Also present at the talks were Sergeant Felix Doh and Commandant Gaspard Deli, respective leaders of the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Far West and Movement of Justice and Peace, two rebel groups which emerged at the end of last November in the west and seized several key towns.

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