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French troops fanned out across Ivory Coast on Sunday, moving between government and rebel forces to secure a fledgling cease-fire after a month of fighting that split the West African country and sent tens of thousands of terrified residents fleeing.
But in the rebel heartland of Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city, many residents remained wary, fearful fighting could start again.
Even as French troops rolled across the country ?? through the cocoa and coffee fields of the West to the eastern reaches near the Ghanaian border ?? scores of residents fled the city, heading for Brobo, about 15 miles to the east.
"In three months, this will fail. When it fails, what will happen?" asked one man, as women and children trudged by. He gave his name only as T. Ouattara.
Aid workers estimate 200,000 people ?? about a third of Bouake's population ?? have already fled the city.
Ivory Coast's deadliest rebellion began with a Sept. 19 uprising by a core group of between 750-800 soldiers, many dismissed from the army for suspected disloyalty.
Since then, rebels have seized half the country, and the fighting has ignited long simmering tensions between mainly Muslim northern tribes and the Christian and animist south. On Thursday, both sides agreed to a cease-fire and to start talks to resolve the crisis.
Eleven trucks packed with French special forces, five jeeps and an armored personnel carrier rumbled through Bouake's busy market place Sunday, heading south to the capital, Yamoussoukro, to take part in the cross-country deployment. The convoy was escorted through the semi-deserted city by insurgents, who have made Bouake their own ?? and won lusty support from many residents.
Rebel leader Cherif Ousmane, his injured right arm in a silk-scarf sling, met earlier with a French battalion commander in a wood-and-thatch shelter near a school on the eastern edge of town where French troops are based.
"Relations with the French are good," Ousmane, who was injured when a shell hit his car during the fighting, told reporters. "But we just want them to fulfill their role as a buffer force."
France has agreed to deploy patrols, set up observation posts, and in some cases, checkpoints, to monitor and secure the cease-fire in its former colony, where it already has more than 1,000 troops to protect French and other foreign nationals. It has promised to retaliate "very strongly" if attacked.
Capt. Valery Putz, a French army spokesman, said the redeployment of French troops to fulfill their new mission began Sunday with troops setting up positions at "contact points" between rebel and government forces.
The French buffer line is expected to remain in place at least until West African nations put together their own monitoring effort.
"We are here to assure that the accord is respected," Putz said. "Since the signing of the accord ... There have been no incidents of note in the country, which augurs well for the mission."
Military officials from the Economic Community of West African States ?? the regional grouping that mediated the truce ?? are due in Ivory Coast next week on a reconnaissance mission to determine how troops from member nations can help uphold the cease-fire.
In Bouake, however, there were few signs of an easy resolution to the crisis that has knocked Ivory Coast from the African elite of stable nations into the ranks of sub-Saharan war-torn states.
Thousands of people rallied in the main square, hollering their demands that President Laurent Gbagbo resign. "We want Gbagbo out," they chanted, as rebels in fatigues fired guns in the air to subdue the heaving crowd.
Ami Kone, a member of the northern Dioula tribe, berated Gbagbo, a southwestern Bete, for treating her ethnic group as second-class citizens. "He is a xenophobe," she said.
(China Daily October 21, 2002)
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