Global Policy Forum

By Davina Berghaus

The UN Security Council took a strong line yesterday in talks with Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, warning of consequences -- including sanctions -- should the peace process in the divided state remain at an impasse.

"We will make no secret of the consequences should the government fail to implement" a peace pact signed in January last year that has been trampled by spurts of violence and constant political bickering, Sichan Siv, a US envoy to the United Nations, told AFP before the meeting with Gbagbo. Sanctions are "definitely on the books," he added. The team, representing 14 of the 15 Security Council members, arrived in Ivory Coast on Tuesday from Ghana, where they kicked off an eight-day west African tour to promote "coherent policy-making" in the region wracked by more than a decade of war, Britain's UN ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said. Helping Ivory Coast emerge from 20 months of crisis is a key priority of the whirlwind trip that also includes stops in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau before winding up in Nigeria.

The African cocoa giant tumbled into chaos when a failed coup against Gbagbo in September 2002 spawned a civil war that split the country between the rebel-held north and the ferociously partisan south. Military hostilities have mostly ceased but new violence in the main city Abidjan has targeted foreign nationals, particularly those from former colonial power France, as well as the UN mission on the ground since April 4. Gbagbo heard stern warnings from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan that such violence was unacceptable during a recent private visit to the United States, and Parry said that such warnings would be reiterated by the Security Council delegation. Wednesday's full day of talks opened with a meeting with Prime Minister Seydou Diarra characterized by Siv as "positive," which included a promise to resolve a dispute over the broadcast of the UN peace radio network mandated under the UN operation.

The national broadcast association said last week that it had not authorized the use of a frequency band for the radio network and thus blocked transmission of what it called a "pirate" radio station. Diarra then joined the UN team behind closed doors for an hour-long meeting with the Ivory Coast president to discuss moving the peace process forward as well as resolving the deadlock that has suspended government functions for months. Opposition parties quit Ivory Coast's unity government to protest a brutal state crackdown on a pro-peace rally in March that left at least 120 people dead, according to a report by a UN human rights team. Gbagbo then sacked three opposition ministers and replaced them with members of his ruling Ivorian Popular Front (FPI).

The opposition parties, including the political arm of the rebels who rose against Gbagbo in 2002, have said this week that they were predisposed to resuming dialogue with the president so as to again take their seats in the fractured unity government. Travel bans and a freezing of financial accounts are the most likely sanctions that could be applied against the main protagonists on both sides of the conflict, diplomatic observers have said. Full-scale export bans are unlikely to be levied against Ivory Coast as the two main exporters of its main cash crop cocoa are US-based companies. The United States is a permanent member of the Security Council.

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