PRESS CONFERENCE ON WEST AFRICA

PRESS CONFERENCE ON WEST AFRICA

Conflicts in Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone were interlinked and required a common solution, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Foreign Minister of Ghana and acting Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), said this morning as he briefed correspondents, along with Pierre-Andre Wiltzer, Minister for Cooperation and Francophone Affairs of France.

Mr. Akufo-Addo thanked France, the current Security Council President, for convening the special meeting on West Africa, as it was a step toward developing such a regional approach.  The stated purpose of the meeting was to examine the Secretary-General’s report on cross-border issues that threatened stability in the region.

Today’s meeting had come at a particularly appropriate and sensitive time, Mr. Akufo-Addo said, given the violence that had taken place today during massive demonstrations in Abidjan.  While everyone was upset over those events, developments in the past 18 months were positive overall, following the signing of the Linas-Marcoussis Agreement.  But the continued involvement of the international community was of critical significance, since countries in the region could not solve the problems on their own, due to their poor economic situation.

Even so, countries in the region were working hard to resolve the situation, he said.  Ghana, in particular, was highly concerned about the stability of Côte d’Ivoire both because of its economic importance in West Africa and because of the many ties between the two peoples.  Yesterday, the President of Ghana had spent the whole day in Abidjan, meeting with all the key players in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid today’s events. 

Mr. Wiltzer, Minister for Cooperation and Francophone Affairs of France, said the international community was fully committed to finding solutions to the crises of West Africa.  Each country’s situation had its own features, but there was also much in common.  That was to a large part the result of porous borders, across which there was trafficking of arms and people, recruitment of mercenaries and child soldiers and pillaging of natural resources.

In order to put an end to these scourges, demobilization and reintegration of former militias had to take place, he said.  That was the heart of the Secretary-General’s report. 

France, he said, hoped that coordinated and effective measures would take place to create conditions for a lasting peace in the region.  The country was standing shoulder to shoulder with West Africans in Côte d’Ivoire.  Peacekeeping efforts in Liberia would help the situation in Côte d’Ivoire as well.  In addition, he called on all Ivorian actors to ensure rapid and convergent progress in the Linas-Marcoussis agreement that all the parties had signed. 

When a correspondent asked whether today’s violence in Côte d’Ivoire could delay the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping mission there, Mr. Akufo-Addo expressed hope that such a mission would be seen as even more urgent now, though of course it was equally important that Ivorians create the conditions to allow its deployment. 

Responding to a question about commonalities between the West African situation and that of Equatorial Guinea, Mr. Akufo-Addo said that the mercenaries that were coming from Southern Africa presented a separate set of problems from cross-border fighters in West Africa, but both must be dealt with.  In the case of West Africa, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes must be reinforced along with control of the flow of weapons. 

Agreeing with that response, Mr. Wiltzer said that France had recently passed legislation that allowed the prosecution of professional mercenaries, but the ex-militias of West Africa had to be dealt with in a very different way.  Comprehensive reconstruction was required through a large-scale regional effort.  That was the thrust of the Secretary-General’s report, he concluded.

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