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Aides say Ivory Coast former rebels are attacking

25 April 2011 19:40 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Aides to Ivory Coast’s renegade warlord said Monday that former rebels who have joined the new army attacked them in Abidjan’s sprawling Yopougon suburb, APA reports quoting â€œAssociated Pressâ€.
Felix Anoble, the top aide and spokesman for Ibrahim "IB" Coulibaly, called for an end to fighting and told The Associated Press that he feared there was a plot to assassinate Coulibaly.
Both the new army and forces supporting Coulibaly have been fighting in the area to dislodge pockets of resistance by remnants of militiamen loyal to arrested former president Laurent Gbagbo.
The attack, which an aide said started Monday morning, comes a day after the warlord failed to turn up for a meeting with longtime rival Defense Minister Guillaume Soro.
Anoble said that Coulibaly’s forces don’t trust Soro.
"Soro is a belligerent in the conflict...He cannot become a victor if Ibrahim Coulibaly is left out in the cold," he said. "It’s time for Alassane Ouattara, the president of the republic, to create a proper government that does not include belligerents."
The Associated Press has been asking for an interview with Soro for more than a week without success.
On Friday, Ouattara ordered Coulibaly to lay down his arms and Soro’s fighters to return to their barracks in Bouake. On Saturday, Coulibaly said he was ready to lay down his arms, but said it would take time to organize.
"When you are threatened with death, you cannot dispose of the only thing that is protecting you," Anoble said. "We get the impression that it is his very life that they want. How can he disarm?"
Coulibaly and Soro fought full-scale battles for leadership of the former rebels who propelled Ouattara to power after Gbagbo refused to accept his defeat at Nov. 28 presidential elections.
Colleagues of Coulibaly said they were meeting with Ouattara on Monday, but Ouattara spokeswoman Affoussy Bamba said Ouattara’s top aide was not aware of a planned meeting.
Coulibaly’s aide on Monday said they were waiting for a U.N. escort to take them to the meeting. But, he said, the U.N. called him to say they had not received authority to escort Coulibaly, and the U.N. could not guarantee his security.
Anoble said that the invitation to meet with Ouattara was a "rendezvous with death" because Soro’s forces had massed heavy weapons and were hidden along the route that Coulibaly would have taken for the meeting.
An Associated Press reporter, however, went through Angre all the way to the suburb of Abobo and did not see any heavy weapons.
His men on Monday had blocked the road into their section of Abobo, and young men at the roadblock said they fear they are going to be attacked. New blue sandbags had also been put up in front of the road leading to Coulibaly’s base in Abobo.
A reporter saw a couple of trucks with furniture and other belongings leaving the neighborhood, but said the markets were open and women were selling plantains, onions, tomatoes and cigarettes at shops throughout.
Coulibaly has helped orchestrate two coup attempts in Ivory Coast, including a successful one in 1999, and in the past has indicated his own presidential aspirations, though he has said that he accepts Ouattara’s authority.
The West African nation, the world’s top cocoa producer, has been in crisis for more than a decade. Coulibaly led the 2002 rebellion that divided the country between a rebel-held north and government-run south until Soro forced him into exile.
He re-emerged in Abidjan in January at the head of the "Invisible Commandos" to start the battle against Gbagbo’s forces after soldiers fired mortar shells and rockets into Abobo, a neighborhood that voted en masse for Ouattara.
Anoble said Coulibaly’s forces are tired of war.
"Ivory Coast needs peace. IB Coulibaly is a man of peace. He feels that one more shot fired is one shot too many," Anoble said. "Ivory Coast has suffered too much. Alassane Ouattara has suffered too much. Ibrahim Coulibaly has suffered too much. This fratricide must stop. There is nothing to justify a war between the troops of Soro and the troops of IB Coulibaly."
He said everyone is to blame for what has happened in the West African country, including Ouattara’s party, Ouattara himself and Coulibaly, who he described as the "father of the rebellion."
"We should all be making our mea culpas," he said. "I beg the president to receive Ibrahim Coulibaly."
Also Monday, an officer in Ivory Coast’s new army said that hundreds of combatants who fought to install President Ouattara have returned to their barracks.
Col. Gaoussou Soumahourou said they began returning to their barracks in the northern city of Bouake even before Ouattara’s order Friday. Ouattara said the war had ended with the April 11 arrest of Gbagbo, whose refusal to accept electoral defeat led to prolonged fighting that killed hundreds.
"Many (fighters) have already returned to Bouake but we are just keeping here those we need to complete our missions in Yopougon and Abobo," Soumahourou said, referring to two Abidjan neighborhoods where fighting has continued. "Six hundred to 700 have gone back to Bouake in the last week, others will leave tomorrow, it’s continuing. When we have completed our mission we will return to our barracks as the president has ordered."
A few dozen fighters were at Soumahourou’s temporary base on the outskirts of the commercial capital of Abidjan on Monday. A week ago it was teeming with thousands of fighters and looted vehicles.