Global Policy Forum

By Peter Murphy

Delays and allegations of intended fraud marred the start-up in Ivory Coast on Thursday of a national plan to issue identity papers for long-delayed elections due by the end of October. United Nations officials see the scheme, which aims to provide identity papers for 3.5 million people without documents, as a key step in implementing a U.N.-backed peace plan for the war-divided West African country. The U.N. peace blueprint calls for elections to be held by end-October, but continuous delays and incessant bickering between President Laurent Gbagbo's supporters and their rebel foes means this deadline could well slip, diplomats say.

The divisive question of national identity -- who is a "pure" Ivorian -- was at the heart of the brief civil war which broke out in 2002 when rebels tried to oust Gbagbo. They seized and now hold the north of the world's top cocoa grower, while Gbagbo's forces control the south.

The justice minister this week announced the identification process would kick off on Thursday and dispatched magistrates around the country to hold hearings for people to seek identity documents to be able to vote in the planned polls. But hearings in Abidjan failed to get underway. Officials in three city areas where the scheme was due to kick off told Reuters they were either not informed of the plan or that preparations were not yet finished.

"The hearings didn't start here. We're ready, the security forces are there - we're just waiting for the magistrates," said administrator Kennedy Toure in Abobo, a poor Abidjan suburb. "I think it will probably start tomorrow," he added.

Gbagbo's supporters, who accuse the U.N. of meddling in Ivorian affairs, criticised the scheme as a ploy to fraudulently swell the voting register. They say this is the intention of Justice Minister Mamadou Kone, a member of the rebel movement who serves in the U.N.-backed transitional government.

"The justice minister's attempt to force this through...is really just a bid to prepare electoral fraud to the benefit of his (rebel) movement," Pascal Affi N'Guessan, leader of the pro-Gbagbo ruling Ivorian Popular Front Party (FPI), said. He said the FPI wanted Gbagbo to halt the process.

Flexible Deadline?

The rebels say Ivory Coast's mainly-Muslim northerners are treated as foreigners in their own country and that thousands of have had their ID papers torn up during spot checks by security forces from the more Christian or animist south. "If there is a crisis in this country one of the causes is that people haven't been identified and enabled to vote. To do that they need to have papers," U.N. High Representative for Elections in Ivory Coast, Gerard Stoudmann, told Reuters.

He expected the identification operation to begin in Abidjan by Friday at the latest. Ivory Coast's peace process has been characterised by delays and deadlock. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who met with all sides in the conflict last week, has suggested an extension to the October election deadline may be possible. "If elections are held two, three or four months later, that is less critical than not being able to hold credible elections," U.S. Ambassador to Ivory Coast Aubrey Hooks told Reuters by telephone during a visit to the rebel-held zone.

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