Five African leaders to attend Accra meetings on peace of Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia

Five African heads of states are expected to attend the meetings on Thursday in the Ghanaian capital Accra on peace progress in West Africa's war-torn Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia, officials with the sub-region's economic grouping ECOWAS said Tuesday.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Ghanaian counterpart John Kufuor convened the first meeting on Cote d'Ivoire, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported Tuesday.

Obasanjo is the current chairman of the African Union (AU), while Kufour serves as the current chairperson of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Other leaders expected to attend the meeting include Gabonese President Omar Bongo, Cote d'Ivoirian President Laurent Gbagbo andPrime Minister Seydou Diarra, as well as South African President Thabo Mbeki.

Cote d'Ivoire, the former French colony, was thrown into crisisin September 2002, following a failed uprising against the government of President Laurent Gbagbo. The crisis was officially declared over last year but the country remains split in two, withFrench soldiers patrolling a buffer zone.

The second meeting on Liberia, which comes up after the first meeting, is convened specially by the ECOWAS "to smoothen up roughedges" in the peace process.

It will be attended by Obasanjo and Kufuor as well as Gyude Brayant, interim chairman of the transitional government in Liberia.

Also to be present are the chairmen of two main rebel groups, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), the mediator of the Liberian peace process and former Nigerian military ruler Abdulsalami Abubakar.

Civil war in Liberia lasted 14 years and ended last August whenthe government and the LURD and MODEL signed a peace accord following ex-president Charles Taylor's exile in Nigeria.

During the Accra meetings, also to be discussed is the humanitarian crisis in Sudan's western Darfur region where fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people, with many of themfleeing to neighboring Chad, according to a statement from the Nigerian presidency on Monday.

Nigerian President Obasanjo had appointed Abubakar as his special envoy to Chad and Sudan to assess the situation and reportback to him before Thursday, the statement said.

Source: Xinhua