IVORY COAST: UN seeks guarantees for return of its troops and aid workers to bases in western Ivory Coast

Record ID: 182476

  • Title: IVORY COAST: UN seeks guarantees for return of its troops and aid workers to bases in western Ivory Coast
  • Date: 17th February 2006
  • Summary: JAN EGELAND WITH MAHO GLOFIE WESTERN IVORY COAST MILITIA LEADER ;EGELAND LOOKING AT BURNED CAR; CAR BURNED; EGELAND AS HE VISITS THE HUMANITRIAN OFFICE BURNED (5 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 4th March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVABHG2HXSWV9YCV2PN1GTORQB1C
  • Story Text: The United Nations wants to return its troops and aid workers to bases in western Ivory Coast evacuated during riots last month, but only if the government guarantees security, a U.N. envoy said on Thursday (February 16, 2006).
    "Our hope is to return here," Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said while visiting the western town of Guiglo, where a U.N. military base and aid offices were attacked and burned by anti-U.N. rioters in January.
    As a result, several hundred U.N. peacekeeping troops and aid workers were pulled out of this volatile part of Ivory Coast, a country which has been split since a 2002 civil war between a rebel-occupied north and government-controlled south. Representatives of the refugees at Guiglo, many of them farmers of Burkinabe origin who have been attacked in the past by local militias in land and ethnic conflicts, pleaded for the return of the U.N. peacekeepers and foreign aid workers.
    "We fear for our security ... We were scared because the people who looked after us ran away and we were left like orphans," said farmer Zongo Ousseni, who has been living at the refugee camp for three years with his wife and two children.
    "We can't return before we have minimum guarantees for our security," Egeland said as he viewed burned-out U.N. offices and listened to appeals from refugees displaced by past violence who had been depending on the U.N. for support and protection. He said the guarantees should include an end to "the climate of impunity" in Ivory Coast and punishment for those, such as the leaders of last month's unrest, who incited violence.
    The U.N. envoy has called on President Laurent Gbagbo's government to prosecute the perpetrators of the January riots, which paralysed the economic capital Abidjan and other cities.
    During the January riots, Bangladeshi U.N. peacekeepers shot dead five protesters when a mob stormed their camp at Guiglo and tried to seize weapons and vehicles, U.N. officials say.
    Egeland said he would wait for a complete assessment from international humanitarian agencies before deciding on whether to send back U.N. personnel to western Ivory Coast.
    U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has sent Gbagbo a $3.6 million U.S. dollar bill for U.N. property and equipment damaged or lost during the January riots.
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