Northern secession talk raises stakes ahead of Ivorian poll

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- A secessionist movement in Ivory Coast's Muslim north gathered pace ahead of Sunday's high-risk parliamentary election and against a backdrop of political and ethnic violence which has killed at least two dozen people.

Supporters of former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara chased government officials out of his ancestral town of Kong earlier this week, and delegations of traditional chieftains visited northern towns on Friday to convince others to follow suit.

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Police in the main city Abidjan, where more than 400 people have been arrested in a crackdown on likely troublemakers, said they had found a man shot dead overnight in the teeming suburb of Abobo, a Ouattara stronghold and protest flashpoint.

There were no immediate reports of fresh protests in the suburb, which like the rest of the country is under a state of emergency and overnight curfew, but the death took to 24 the overall toll since Monday.

Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans (RDR), which has its power base among northern Muslims, called street protests in defiance of a ban on him standing for parliament because of doubts over his nationality.

The ruling from the supreme court, which earlier barred him from an October 22 presidential election, triggered fighting pitting Ouattara supporters against security forces or political and ethnic rivals in Abidjan, and a northern break-away movement.

"We no longer feel ourselves bound by the Ivorian administration," said a group of 16 chiefs from villages around the northwestern city of Odienne in a statement dated Wednesday and received by Reuters on Friday.

Ultimatum

"We call on the government and his excellence Laurent Gbagbo, president of the republic of Ivory Coast, to take steps for an amicable separation by calling all Ivory Coast's administration from our territory within 48 hours," they said.

Government officials in the northern Savanah region capital of Korhogo said that colleagues had already left the town of M'Bengue while at Boundiali protesters smashed their way into the local administrative office and destroyed ballot boxes.

So far, Gbagbo's government has insisted that Sunday's election will go ahead as planned.

But political sources said efforts to negotiate an end to the crisis may hinge on delaying the poll for one week to allow time for a return to calm and for Ouattara's lawyers to explore options for defusing the crisis over his nationality.

The poll could be postponed for longer in those areas where government officials had left, the sources added.

They said national mediator Mathieu Ekra was trying to arrange a last-ditch meeting to resolve the issue before Sunday.

Ben Zahoui, coordinator of the mediation committee, said on Thursday that a resolution would depend on the RDR first issuing a call over state media for street protests to end.

Ouattara's opponents say he is a national of Burkina Faso, but he says this is a political ploy.

The European Union, presided over by Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler France, condemned Ouattara's exclusion and called the government and political parties to ban violence and seek a political solution to the crisis.

Ouattara, currently in France, was said to be interested in the new ideas, party sources said.

Gbagbo, who won the October presidential election, told French daily Le Figaro that the world's top cocoa producer was not on the brink of civil war but that an end to street violence was an essential first step towards defusing the crisis.

"We must get the fever down first. When the fever has fallen, we will govern to heal the wounds," he said.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Organization of African Unity
Amnesty International 2000 country report, Ivory Coast
U.S. Department of State, Human Rights Reports for 1999: Cote d'Ivoire
Library of Congress, Country Study, Ivory Coast

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