Cote d' Ivoire's govt. extends curfew nationwide

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, October 01, 2002

Cote d' Ivoire's govt. extends curfew nationwide

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The government of Cote d' Ivoire on Monday extended an ongoing dusk-to-dawn curfew until Oct. 7 as the standoff between the government troops and the rebel soldiers entered its 12th day, state television reported.

The government started imposing a national curfew on Sept. 19 when the disgruntled soldiers staged a revolt in three main citiesof the country, namely Abidjan, Bouake and Korhogo.

The mutineers are still in control of the central city of Bouake and the northern city of Korhogo and a string of towns further north.

The nationwide curfew, which originally ended on Monday, was extended by a week with the operation from 8:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) to6:00 a.m. (0600 GMT) everyday, the report said.

In the second largest city of Bouake and Korhogo, the curfew begins two hours earlier and ends two hours later.

A military spokesman said on Monday that no military operationswere currently under way against the mutinous soldiers in the rebel-held areas, paving the way for a presidential contact group to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Leaders from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) held an emergency one-day summit on Cote d' Ivoire in Ghana's capital Accra on Sunday with a pledge to mediate between the government and the rebels in the strife-torn country.

At the end of the ECOWAS summit, President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal told a news conference that the presidential contact group,made up of Ghana, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Togo and Guinea-Bissau, isto lead the mediation mission.

The group has received instructions to "establish contact with the insurgents, prevail upon them to immediately cease all hostilities, restore normalcy to the occupied towns and negotiate a general framework for the resolution of the crisis in Cote d' Ivoire".

Foreign and defense ministers from Nigeria, Ghana and Togo lateMonday were expected in the country's commercial center of Abidjanto meet up with President Laurent Gbgabo as soon as they arrive.

The troika's ministers will try to make contact with mutinous soldiers to lay the groundwork for negotiations.

If negotiations fail to end the conflict, the leaders agreed todispatch the military army of the ECOWAS, ECOMOG, to restore stability in the troubled country.

Wade, also ECOWAS chairman, said up to 4,000 peacekeeping troops deployed into Cote d' Ivoire would prevent fighting rather than put down the revolt.

"We have received the agreement of every (ECOWAS) nation to participate in an ECOMOG force," he said.

The ECOWAS has over the past decade sent peacekeeping and intervention troops to conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau.

In his response when returning home from the emergency summit, President Gbagbo welcomed the outcomes of the summit.

The summit had evolved a good agreement with the "unanimous condemnation" of an army rebellion in his country, he said, stressing that the west African leaders have agreed to term the uprising as a rebellion rather than a mutiny.

The bloody uprising in the cocoa-rich country has plunged Cote d' Ivoire into its worst crisis since its independence from Francein 1960 and has claimed over 400 lives and left thousands of people homeless.

The government has alleged that the rebel soldiers are backed by a regional "rogue state," which is widely interpreted to mean northern neighboring Burkina Faso.

Relations between the two countries are tense. Burkina Faso is unhappy at the treatment by the authorities of some 3 million of its people living in Cote d' Ivoire.

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