Bamako, 28 Nov 2003 (IRIN) - President
Laurent Gbagbo flew to Bamako on Friday for talks on the deadlocked peace
process in Cote d'Ivoire as reports emerged of further clashes between
farmers of Gbagbo's Bete tribe and immigrant farmers in the south of the
country.
Gbagbo's two-hour meeting with his Malian
counterpart, Amadou Toumani Toure, followed a similar flying visit to Burkina
Faso on Wednesday for talks with President Blaise Campaore.
Burkina Faso and Mali are both landlocked countries which border upon the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire. Their economies have suffered heavily from the effects of civil war in their once prosperous southern neighbour, but Gbagbo has suspected both of giving support to the rebels.
The main trade routes from Burkina Faso and Mali to the port of Abidjan were cut after the Ivorian conflict erupted in September last year. And a tide of Burkinabe and Malian residents in Cote d'Ivoire fled home after the outbreak of civil war led to the persecution of immigrants from other West African countries in the government-controlled south of the country.
Gbagbo flew to Bamako as reports emerged that four people had been killed in fighting between Burkinabe immigrant farmers who had been thrown off their land and their former neighbours near the southern city of Gagnoa.
A spokesman for the paramilitary gendarmerie in Gagnoa, 230 km northwest of the commercial capital Abidjan, said one gendarme was killed and two were injured in an exchange of gunfire with a gang of armed Burkinabe immigrants after they were sent to restore order in the village of Broudoume on Thursday.
Three civilians had also been killed in the clashes, which began on Wednesday and also involved fighting with machetes, the gendarmerie spokesman told IRIN. Gunfire could still be heard in the area on Friday morning, he added.
The gendarmerie spokesman said the army chief of staf,f General Mathias Doue, had arrived in Gagnoa on Friday to take control of the security situation.
Last month local farmers chased about 500 immigrant cocoa farmers from their land near Gagnoa. Most were from Burkina Faso and from the Baoule tribe of central Cote d'Ivoire.
An Ivorian journalist in Gagnoa contacted by IRIN said the latest trouble erupted after local Bete farmers tried to harvest and sell cocoa from the immigrants' abandoned farms.
Little of substance emerged publicly from Gbagbo's summit meeting with Toure in the hill-top presidential palace in Bamako. A joint communique issued afterwards said the French-brokered peace accord signed between Gbagbo and the rebels in January should remain the framework for solving the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire.
The rebels, who are officially known as "The New Forces," joined a broad-based government of national reconciliation in April, but pulled out on 23 September, just before they were due to start a disarmament and demobilisation process, claiming Gbagbo had refused to delegate effective power to ministers.
Tension has been mounting since then, but a whirlwind of top-level diplomacy in West Africa has so far failed to achieve a reconciliation between the two sides.
Toure told reporters after his talks with Gbagbo: "Mali is resolutely determined to work for a return to peace in Cote d'Ivoire because we suffer heavily from the collateral effects of this crisis."
Before flying to Bamako, Gbagbo made a televised speech to the nation on Thursday night which was more conciliatory in tone than many of his recent statements. However, he offered no new concessions to the rebels.
Gbagbo made unusually friendly comments about France which has 4,000 peacekeeping troops stationed in Cote d'Ivoire, but which has frequently been accused publicly by Gbagbo's top aides of supporting the rebels.
Several Ivorian newspapers interpreted Gbagbo's new warmth towards France as an effort by the president to ingratiate himself with the French government so that he would be invited to meet President Jacques Chirac in Paris later this month.
Gbagbo held talks with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin during a flying visit to Gabon on 21 November.
In a further conciliatory gesture, a cabinet meeting, chaired by Gbagbo on Thursday, discussed for the first time a package of legal reforms demanded by the January peace accord which the government had until now put on the back-burner.
The new laws are designed to give West African immigrants, who accounted for 30 percent of Cote d'Ivoire's 16 million population before the civil war, firmer rights of residence and formal ownership of the land they have farmed, often for two or three generations. They are also due to make it easier for Ivorians with a foreign parent to stand for the presidency.
The present wording of the consitutiton was invoked to prevent former prime minister Alassane Ouattara, who commands wide support in the north, from standing against Gbagbo in the 2000 presidential election.
[ENDS]
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