Annan to attend Ghana summit on Cote d'Ivoire crisis

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will attend the summit to be held in Ghana on July 29 on the Cote d'Ivoire crisis, Albert Tevoedjre, the UN special representative to Cote d'Ivoire, said Tuesday.

Tevoedjre said in a statement that President of Cote d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo held a telephone conservation with Annan, promisingto make efforts to hold the summit in Accra, capital of Ghana, on time.

Earlier in the day, the opposition in the country said that theAccra summit to seek an end to the west African state's 22 months of crisis was likely to be postponed.

The statement also said that Annan took part in a meeting held by the UN Security Council at the headquarters in New York on the situation in Cote d'Ivoire.

After attending the African Union (AU) Summit held in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, on July 6, Annan announced that a high-level meeting, chaired by Ghanaian President John Kufuor, also chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS),will be held in Accra on July 29 to discuss the current stalled peace process in Cote d'Ivoire.

Leaders of some west African countries, and Gabonese President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba and South African President Thabo Mbeki,will also attend the Ghana summit.

Cote d'Ivoire has been split into two warring camps since the failed coup in September 2002, with rebels holding the north and government loyalists controlling the south.

A peace agreement was signed in Linas-Marcoussis near Paris by the Cote d'Ivoire government, rebel forces and opposition political parties on Jan. 24, 2003. And a national reconciliation government was formed later.

The peace process in Cote d'Ivoire was stalemated in March thisyear after opposition ministers quit the country's interim government following a deadly state-sanctioned crackdown on an opposition rally during which at least 120 were killed.

In June, Gbagbo held two rounds of talks with representatives of four major opposition parties to try to revive the peace process, which marked the first face-to-face meeting in three months between the two sides.

However, three opposition parties boycotted the talks, saying "it is not the right time to hold dialogues." They insisted that they would not sit down with Gbagbo without mediation by the United Nations.

Source: Xinhua