Global Policy Forum

The UN Security Council began a round of meetings Monday with officials in Ivory Coast to promote reconciliation after years of war and to see how the UN can assist in a long-delayed presidential election.

South Africa's UN Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said the meetings with President Laurent Gbagbo, government officials, political leaders and the head of the Independent Electoral Commission were very important to keep the peace process moving."The Security Council is coming to see how we can assist the Ivorian people to be ready for their election" on Nov. 30, he said. "So it's a very important meeting, and also to acknowledge that the last time we were here there were many things outstanding which have now happened."

Ivory Coast is the final stop on the council's six-nation cross-continent trip to visit African hotspots. It started in Nairobi, Kenya, then flew to Djibouti, where talks on Somalia were taking place, then on to Sudan, Chad and Congo.

Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, had been considered one of Africa's most stable countries until it suffered its first coup in 1999. Tension over the rights of immigrants and minority ethnic groups fueled a coup attempt in 2002, which ignited a war that split the country into a rebel-controlled north and government-run south.

A peace deal reached in March 2007 in Burkina Faso officially reunited the country and brought rebel leader Guillaume Soro into the government as prime minister. But former rebel soldiers have retained de facto control of the northern half of the country. Kumalo cited progress since the peace deal: the opposing parties can now visit each other's territory and the question of who can register to vote, "which was a big thing," has been resolved and completed.

"So it's very important for us to be here to mark this process," he said. The Security Council in January authorized the 9,200-strong UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast "to support the organization in Ivory Coast of free, open, fair and transparent elections."

That mandate expires on July 30, and is virtually certain to be extended to ensure UN support through the Nov. 30 election. In October 2007, the council authorized the top UN envoy in Ivory Coast, Choi Young-jin, to certify "that all stages of the electoral process provide all the necessary guarantees for the holding of open, free, fair and transparent presidential elections in accordance with international standards."

Choi and senior UN officials in Ivory Coast briefed the council delegation at the start of a series of meetings on Friday. The council's arrival in Ivory Coast was delayed by more than nine hours because a gun belonging to a UN security official accidentally discharged as it was being put into a locked box on a small plane that was supposed to take members from Goma in eastern Congo back to the capital, Kinshasa.

While no one was hurt, the aircraft could not fly until it underwent a technical inspection because the bullet went into the floor. The council delegation eventually took a four-hour bus trip from Goma to the Rwandan capital, Kigali. The large UN aircraft that had ferried the delegation across Africa was able to land there. But the delegation had to come up with US$20,000 in cash to pay for jet fuel before the plane could take off for Abidjan. It arrived early Monday morning instead of Sunday evening.

The U.N. delegation was scheduled to return to New York on Monday night.