President of Cote d'Ivoire to Attend ECOWAS Summit

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, September 28, 2002

President of Cote d'Ivoire to Attend ECOWAS Summit

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President of Cote d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo will attend an extraordinary summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on the spate of violent unrest in the country scheduled for Sunday in Ghana, the government sources said Friday.

The Ghanaian Foreign Ministry earlier Friday announced that allleaders from 15 member states will attend the emergency summit to find a peaceful solution to the uprising in Cote d'Ivoire that is threatening stability and peace in the impoverished sub-region.

Ghanaian Foreign Minister Hackman Owusu-Agyeman said if the ECOWAS leaders do not complete their talks on Sunday, they are expected to extend the meeting by one day.

The emergency summit was originally to be held in Senegal's capital Dakar on Oct. 5 but shifted on Sept. 29 in Abidjan before being slated for Accra, capital of Ghana.

An ECOWAS spokesman said the changes in date and location were made" because of our increasing concern about the situation" in Cote d'Ivoire.

To help put down over week-long military uprising, Ghana and Nigeria Thursday put troops on standby and agreed to send warplanes to Cote d'Ivoire.

The ECOWAS has warned insurgents that they were on a dead end course, saying that it asked member states to be ready to come to the assistance of the government of Cote d'Ivoire.

Several other west African countries have also expressed their willingness to assist Cote d'Ivoire in finding a solution to the crisis.

The shadow of more bloody fighting is thickening after Defense Minister of Cote d'Ivoire Lida Moise Kouassi late Thursday declared that the central city of Bouake and northern town of Korhogo were war zones and promised an attack within hours.

Though the evacuation procession was carried out under poundingrain and thunderstorms, French troops on Friday succeeded in evacuating the last 750 foreign nationals from the second largest city of Bouake, which have been under rebels' control for more than a week.

After the operation, the last batch of French troops also left Bouake around 2:30 p.m. (1430 GMT) Friday and then stationed at Brobo, a small town about 20 km east of Bouake.

Friday's evacuation was the second operation after the forces helped about 1,200 foreigners, mostly French citizens, left the central battleground on Thursday.

Many panic-stricken residents of the strife-torn city Friday also tried to flee homes under the protection of French troops, but were pressed back by mutineers.

At least 100 bodies were found on Thursday in a military training school in Bouake as insurgents reportedly arrived Thursday evening in the northwestern town of Odienne, near the border with Guinea, and took control of key points.

The latest casualty figure brought to over 400 the death toll since rebel soldiers launched simultaneous attacks before dawn on Sept. 19 in three cities of Cote d'Ivoire.

The government forces quickly regained control of commercial center Abidjan but the rebel soldiers remained in charge of Bouakeand Korhogo. The government troops have vowed to retake them.

The bloody uprising in the cocoa-rich country, which has plunged it into its worst crisis since independence from France in1960, follows almost three years of political instability after Cote d'Ivoire's first-ever army coup in December 1999.

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