Yamoussoukro

Côte d’Ivoire’s Prime Minister, Charles Konan Banny, on Wednesday announced the resumption of preparations for long-postponed elections in the divided country under his new United Nations mandate. ”I’m relaunching operations to distribute … birth certificates and nationality certificates,” Banny said.

South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in Côte d’Ivoire on Tuesday for talks with President Laurent Gbagbo, the latest bid to resolve the long-standing conflict in the war-divided West African nation. Mbeki is expected to meet with rebel leader Guillaume Soro and Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, as well as Gbagbo.

Protagonists in Côte d’Ivoire’s two years of conflict were meeting on Monday in the capital, Yamoussoukro, to wrap up preparations for a long-awaited disarmament campaign set to open this week. An estimated 30 000 combatants — 25 000 of them rebel troops — are expected to enrol in the disarmament exercise.

Members of Ivory Coast’s main opposition party who are named in a new unity government will not participate in the first cabinet session on Thursday due to security concerns in the war-torn country, the head of the party said.

They walk slowly but steadily, hundreds of people filing along a grass-fringed road under an energy-sapping sun. They carry their most precious and necessary belongings in bags, all that is left of lives shattered 10 days ago by a rebel uprising.

Rebel soldiers have fired direct shots at an international boarding school in Ivory Coast’s second city Bouake, where some 170 foreign schoolchildren have been trapped since an uprising last week.

Ivory Coast troops and mutineers were battling on Tuesday for control of the rebel-held central city of Bouake, where machine-gun bullets flew within meters of terrified foreign schoolchildren.

West African peace-makers struggled to hold together a
cease-fire deal on Friday in rebellion-divided Ivory Coast — while rebels accused loyalists of readying their long-threatened counterattack under cover of the truce talks.