Global Policy Forum

By Hugh Bronstein *

The U.N. Security Council intends to adopt a formal statement next week that could lead to prosecution and sanctions against human rights abusers in Ivory Coast and those thwarting a peace accord, diplomats said. The Council on Friday put out a brief statement condemning rights violators but avoided blaming the government for the deaths of some 120 demonstrators in Abidjan on March 25-26.

The office of U.N. Human Rights Commissioner, in a recent report, said security forces and pro-government militia were responsible for killing at least 120 people during a March 25-26 crackdown on a banned opposition protest. Diplomats said the Council was considering threatening sanctions, most likely travel bans, against those who continued to jeopardize a fragile 2003 peace accord between the government and rebel groups, aimed at ending the country's civil war.

On human rights abusers, the Council, in its Friday statement, backed the formation of an international commission to look into events going back to a failed coup attempt in September 2002 against President Laurent Gbagbo that plunged the country into civil war. Gbagbo has called for such a commission several times. On Saturday, he also demanded a new enquiry into the March 25-26 violence, dismissing the first investigation as biased. "The least one can say is that this report is slanted," he said in an official response published in Saturday's edition of Ivory Coast's Fraternite Matin newspaper.

Envoys at the U.N. said that while the government was responsible for the latest killings, the rebels had their share of serious rights abuses last year. The commission looking back at all the violence might in the future report to a new tribunal to be created with international report. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in next week's statement, would be asked to consider the options.

Civil war was officially declared over last July but the former French colony of 16 million people remains split. The conflict has inflamed ethnic tensions between the government-held south and a rebel-held north. The United Nations has authorized 6,240 U.N. peacekeepers and 150 civilian police to patrol front lines with some 4,000 French troops, who operate under a separate command.

Note: Additional reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly in Abidjan