IVORY COAST: Prime Minister Guillaume Soro tells Ivorians to unite, embrace peace

Ivory Coast's new prime minister, Guillaume Soro, urged the war-divided West African country on Friday (April 13) to reunite and embrace a peace plan leading to democratic elections. Soro, a former rebel leader in the 2002/2003 civil war which split the world's No. 1 cocoa producer into two, made the appeal in his first televised address to the nation since his appointment as premier last month by President Laurent Gbagbo. The appointment sealed a March 4 home-grown peace deal between the two former foes which aims to finally achieve the reunification, disarmament and elections that a series of internationally-brokered accords have failed to produce. Soro said everyone was responsible to various degrees for the civil war that killed many people both in the country's north and in the south, and he invited people to reflect on the misery and the pain the fighting has brought. "Today we all have to be humble for those who lost the war. This humility demands us to reject all extremism and all the radicalism. From humility derives compromise and peace. I invite you all to stop the insults, inflexibility and other radicalism, as if we had won the war," Ivory Coast's Prime Minister, Guillaume Soro said in his broadcast that emphasised national reconciliation. He added that one of his priorities is also to bring together the rebel-held north and government-controlled south, separated since 2003 by a buffer zone patrolled by United Nations and French peacekeepers. "We must stick back together the two sides of Ivory Coast. The unification of our country, we are convinced, is done by the reunification of the two armies. The creation of the Integrated Command Centre should accelerate this programme, through the true dedication and the profound inspiration of our brave soldiers, in the North and in the South, to silence the guns for good," Soro added. The March 4 peace plan, mediated at Gbagbo's request by neighbouring Burkina Faso, foresaw elections within 10 months and Soro said this would be a priority for his new government, along with completing a national identity scheme and disarming opposing militias. "The main objective of this new team is the solving of the thorny issue of the national identification of the population. This important endeavour needs a dose of collective conscience outside any political calculus. All the Ivorian men and women, by the terms of this process, will have their identity. Each citizen will have a national identity card to be able to fully have their rights and do their duty. It's an obstacle that our collective will should be able to eliminate," Soro said. Mass immigration to once prosperous Ivory Coast since its 1960 independence from France exacerbated ethnic tensions which were at the heart of the divisive civil war. In his address, Soro pledged to rebuild the country's infrastructure and social services, paying special attention to education and health. People in Ivory Coast's capital Abidjan watched their new premier's first broadcast to the nation on the national television channel, where it was distributed at prime time on Friday (April 13). "I have confidence. I think we are definitely going towards peace and there is a lot of hope. This is a very good speech, from my point of view, I wasn't expecting something like this, I'm happy," said Joseph Zeliarou after watching the programme with his friends. Soro spoke a day after President Gbagbo signed into law an amnesty for crimes against the state in another boost to peace. On Monday, UN and French peacekeeping troops, who together number more than 10,000 in the country, will start pulling back from positions in the buffer zone as part of its gradual dismantling under the peace plan. They will be progressively replaced by joint brigades of government and rebel soldiers.

ITN Source | April 14, 2007

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