- Title: IVORY COAST: IVORIAN PRIME MINISTER CHARLES KONAN BANNYANNOUNCES GOVERNMENT
- Date: 29th December 2005
- Summary: PAN: ARRIVAL OF PRIME MINISTER CHARLES KONAN BANNY
- Embargoed: 13th January 2006 12:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA1RZBCICOQOWGO4FMOETRDHVIJ
- Story Text: Ivory Coast Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny named a cabinet on Wednesday that included rebel leaders from the war-divided country, triggering protests by youths supporting President Laurent Gbagbo.
Police fired warning shots in the air after several hundred pro-Gbagbo militants took to the streets in one suburb of the economic capital Abidjan, blocking roads with burning tyres and wood.
They were protesting against Banny's choice of a government, in which he took over the key economy and finance ministry from a Gbagbo loyalist and also included two leaders of rebel forces who occupy the northern half of the world's top cocoa grower.
The new cabinet had been anxiously awaited as a key step towards tackling disarmament and electoral reforms to allow presidential elections next year under a U.N. peace plan. Ivory Coast has been split in two since a civil war in 2002.
Economist Banny formed the cabinet after several weeks of haggling between himself, supporters and opponents of Gbagbo and the New Forces rebels.
The two rebel leaders included in the government were Guillaume Soro as minister of reconstruction and reinsertion and his deputy, Louis Dakoury Tabley, as minister of war victims.
Soro had served in the former government that had failed to reunite the country and establish a lasting peace.
"This government has the task of preparing a strong Ivory Coast, a prosperous Ivory Coast which will only withstand future challenges if Ivorians trust each other," Banny told reporters at the presidential palace, in the presence of his ministers.
French consular officials in Abidjan, which saw violent anti-French riots last year, cited reports of "scattered disturbances" in the city and advised French nationals living there to stay in their homes.
The appointment of the cabinet will enable Banny, named earlier this month under the U.N. peace blueprint, to begin working on a schedule for disarmament, national reunification and elections by the end of October 2006.
The same U.N. plan allowed Gbagbo to remain in office beyond the Oct. 30 end of his five-year mandate until the polls are held in Ivory Coast, divided between a rebel-occupied north and government-held south.
"The president ensures the continuity of the republic. We have a government in place ... I hope we will work well to get to the end of this crisis," Gbagbo said on Wednesday.
A civilian with a legal background, Rene Aphing Kouassi, was named as defence minister in the new cabinet, while a senior police officer, Joseph Djable, was made minister of security.
The former economy minister, Antoine Bohoun Bouabre, a Gbagbo supporter, got a new post as minister of planning and development.
The new government replaces a previous cabinet formed in the wake of the civil war that grew out of a failed coup.
The rebels have so far refused to disarm. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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