[ 2012-07-13 ]

Gbagbo's party renews talks with I.Coast leaders
ABIDJAN (AFP) - Ivory Coast's Prime Minister
Jeannot Kouadio Ahoussou on Friday met with
leaders of ex-president Laurent Gbagbo's Ivorian
Popular Front (FPI), in a bid to kickstart a
stalled reconciliation process.

The talks were the first between President
Alassane Ouattara's government and the FPI since
tensions rose sharply between the rival sides in
June, halting the work of a Dialogue, Truth and
Reconciliation Commission.

"It's a matter of seeing how we can create a
framework with the government" for future talks,
FPI member and former cabinet member Sebastien
Dano Djedje said at the end of the two-hour
meeting.

Ahoussou, accompanied notably by Interior Minister
Hamed Bakayoko, welcomed an FPI team led by the
party's interim president, Sylvain Miaka Oureto.
The government and the FPI each sent seven
delegates to the meeting, an AFP correspondent
said.

The talks come after attacks by armed gangs killed
more than 20 people in southwest Ivory Coast in
the first half of June, including seven
peacekeepers from Niger serving in the UN mission
in the country, ONUCI.

A few days later, the authorities announced that
they had foiled a coup bid back in March.

Ouattara supporters blamed Gbagbo's backers for
both incidents, but the charge was strongly denied
by the FPI.

Gbagbo himself is currently in a cell of the
International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague,
where he has been accused of murder, rape,
persecution and "other inhuman acts" arising from
a bloody crisis from December 2010 to April 2011.

The conflict broke out when he refused to accept
that he had lost a presidential election to
Ouattara.

The conflict claimed some 3,000 lives before
Gbagbo was captured.

Several meetings between the former rival sides
and the creation of the truth and reconciliation
panel have done little to defuse tension in the
cocoa-rich west African country.

For years, the country was divided between the
south, which was loyal to Gbagbo, and the rebel
north after a failed coup bid against Gbagbo in
September 2002.

Source - AFP

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