Ivory Coast peace talks starting near Paris

Ivory Coast peace talks opened today near Paris with numerous obstacles to ending months of bloody clashes.

But a rebel commander said he was confident that common ground could be found to halt the West African nation’s slide into chaos.

“I am optimistic. I think we will find solutions and what we hope is that everyone is flexible so that we arrive at a negotiated political solution,” said Guillaume Soro, head of the main northern rebel movement.

The government has insisted the insurgents lay down their arms – a demand that has derailed previous negotiations.

The rebels, meanwhile, want the resignation of President Laurent Gbagbo. He has refused.

Soro accused Gbagbo of fanning ethnic tensions, saying: “The Ivorian people had no other choice but to take up arms to impose democracy on the Ivory Coast.”

He demanded presidential and legislative elections and said rebels would only disarm at the end of a peace process.

The dizzying slide into war of what is still West Africa’s second biggest economy began in September with a failed coup attempt against Gbagbo.

Peace efforts have been complicated by the emergence in November of two new rebels groups in the west of the country – backed by fighters from neighbouring Liberia who are renowned for their brutality and drug use.

The Ivorian prime minister yesterday demanded again that the rebels disarm, and said it was mainly for them to suggest solutions.

“We are ready for a dialogue and complete openness,” Pascal Affi Nguessan said ahead of the 11 days of talks at a rugby centre at Linas-Marcoussis, southeast of the French capital.

“But we cannot accept a dialogue that is conducted with weapons,” he said. “Each and every one must put down their arms.”

He also indicated the government would not yield to the rebels’ key demand that Gbagbo step down. “Ivorians are not ready to give (rebels) power because they took up arms,” he said.

France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told MPs yesterday that “we must succeed” in brokering a deal for the sake of the former French colony’s 17 million people.

France’s military is worried about getting bogged down in Ivory Coast.

The government has deployed more than 2,000 troops to protect the 20,000 French citizens there and to enforce an often-violated ceasefire agreed in October between loyalist forces and the main northern rebel movement.

French forces have repeatedly clashed with insurgents in the west.