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ABIDJAN, Dec 14: France began flying hundreds more troops into war-torn Ivory Coast on Saturday, building up its biggest intervention force in a former African colony since the 1980s.
The main rebel group in the West African country has accused Paris of sending an occupying force and said it would respond with war.
France has some 1,500 soldiers monitoring a shaky ceasefire between the government and rebels who seized the north of the country in a September uprising.
But after renewed fighting by two new rebel groups in the west thrust once stable Ivory Coast closer to the anarchy that has engulfed nearby nations in West Africa, France said it would step up its efforts to restore stability to its former colony.
French military spokesman Ange-Antoine Leccia said the first of several hundred extra troops would fly in later on Saturday.
“Today it is just the first company — the others will arrive over the next 10 days,” he said, adding that soldiers and arms would arrive by sea and air.
France, which initially deployed troops to protect thousands of its citizens in Ivory Coast, invited the rebel Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast (MPCI) to peace talks in Paris, provided it proved its political credentials.
The French deployment is the biggest in Africa since 1983 when Paris sent 3,000 troops to its former colony Chad to push back Libyan-backed forces.
But the rebels’ chief negotiator at talks in the Togolese capital Lome told France to get out or face war.
“The French force in Ivory Coast is deviating from its mission and becoming a true force of occupation. In light of this, the MPCI will fight and its forces are ready to take up the challenge of war,” Guillaume Soro said late on Friday.
Leccia declined to respond to Soro’s threat. “These are political comments — we have no response to make to them.”
REFUGEE CRISIS: West African leaders plan a summit in Togo to chart a way out of the deepening war in which hundreds have died and hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes in a country once a haven for the troubled region’s refugees.
UN agencies said they were preparing for a possible refugee crisis in the world’s top cocoa grower, where attacks by the two new rebel factions in the west backed by Liberian fighters have thrown peace efforts into confusion.
Assistant UN High Commissioner for Refugees Kamel Morjane said he was looking at ways to move thousands of refugees from a camp in the volatile western region near the Liberian border.
“We have to be ready for any eventuality — especially, unfortunately, the tragic ones,” he said at an Abidjan transit centre during a visit to assess the region’s needs. He said the government had guaranteed aid workers access to refugees.
Morjane’s agency says 100,000 people, mainly immigrants, have already fled abroad, and many more have left their homes.
France also said it would ask the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate massacres in Ivory Coast, split between northern-based rebels and loyalist forces. Both sides are accused of summary executions and other abuses.—Reuters
