IVORY COAST: Ivory Coast Prime Minister calls for calm and urges candidates to accept poll results

Record ID: 181608

  • Title: IVORY COAST: Ivory Coast Prime Minister calls for calm and urges candidates to accept poll results
  • Date: 31st October 2010
  • Summary: ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST (OCTOBER 30, 2010) (REUTERS) (*** FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ***) IVORY COAST PRIME MINISTER GUILLAUME SORO ENTERING CONFERENCE HALL AND SITTING VARIOUS OF JOURNALISTS SITTING SORO SITTING WITH COMMUNICATION MINISTER (SOUNDBITE) (French) IVORY COAST PRIME MINISTER GUILLAUME SORO, SAYING: "I'm launching an appeal to all political actors: The vote counting will be transparent and the candidates must promise to accept the result proclaimed by the independent electoral commission." SORO IN BACKGROUND WITH CAMERA IN FOREGROUND JOURNALIST WRITING ON NOTEPAD JOURNALISTS LISTENING SORO SEEN IN CAMERA SCREEN (SOUNDBITE) (French) IVORY COAST PRIME MINISTER GUILLAUME SORO, SAYING: "After the results are announced, the loser must salute the winner, we should make sure that happens." JOURNALISTS LISTENING SORO LEAVING CONFERENCE HALL
  • Embargoed: 15th November 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA4AZP3JVKYSP9PXB3Q2QSUWA5V
  • Story Text: Former rebel Guilaume Soro calls for calm ahead of the poll and urges candidates to accept the results as Sunday's election likely to be a close race.
    Ivory Coast's ex-rebel Prime Minister Guillaume Soro appealed on Saturday to all candidates in Sunday's presidential election to accept the declared result and put an end to the West African nation's protracted crisis.
    The race pitting President Laurent Gbagbo against main opposition challengers Henri Konan Bedie and Alassane Ouattara is likely to be close, and many Ivorians fear widespread street violence should a dispute flare up over the result.
    The election is the first in a decade and is viewed as the best chance of restoring lasting peace to the world's top cocoa grower after a 2002-3 war divided it into a government-controlled south and a rebel-controlled north.
    "I'm launching an appeal to all political actors: The vote counting will be transparent and the candidates must promise to accept the result proclaimed by the electoral commission," Soro told a news conference in the main city of Abidjan.
    The elections are seen as vital to attracting investment back to what was once one of West Africa's brightest prospects and to reforming a cocoa sector that supplies over a third of the world market but is in decline.
    Foreign powers and the U.N. peacekeeping mission, which has 9,500 security forces deployed for the vote, are pressing all candidates to accept the result swiftly to prevent bloodshed.
    "After the results are announced, the loser must salute the winner, we should make sure that happens," Soro said.
    Soro became leader of the New Forces rebels a few weeks after they launched a rebellion against President Laurent Gbagbo that failed to unseat him but enabled them to seize half the country.
    Under a peace deal in 2007 he became transitional prime minister and took on an overseer role in the country's slow return to reunification.
    He quit as head of the New Forces rebels in August.
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