PRESS STATEMENT
GOVERNMENT STATEMENT ON THE CRISIS IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE
Luanda, 24 December 2010
The Angolan government continues to follow the developing post-election crisis in Côte d’Ivoire with great concern. It runs the risk of becoming a conflict with unpredictable consequences that could jeopardise peace and stability in West Africa, a region where there are already fragile stabilisation processes in a number of countries where democratic procedures have recently been restored after long wars that tragically affected the region, namely, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau and Niger.
That concern is further heightened by forthcoming electoral processes that could be affected by the situation in Côte d’Ivoire, leading to more tragic events in the continent.
The Angolan government notes with great apprehension the fact that all the measures so far taken by the international community will irremediably lead to war in Côte d’Ivoire.
The speed with which this deteriorating process is taking place is simply an indication of serious anomalies and factors that contributed to the critical situation in Côte d’Ivoire before, during and after the elections, with continued negative effects.
It is indeed strange that radical and extreme international measures were taken internationally within five days, without all the claims of the electorate itself having first been dealt with and duly checked, not only to establish unequivocally who had won, but also to prevent the results being contested. Furthermore, they were taken without even minimal use of means of resolving the differences peacefully through dialogue and negotiations, in accordance with the universally accepted norms for such cases.
The Angolan government is in favour of a peaceful negotiated solution to the Ivorian conflict. It therefore strongly denounces defamatory campaigns claiming that Angolan mercenaries or soldiers have been located in Côte d’Ivoire and considers that these false reports are in keeping with the habitual strategy of foreign interference in the continent’s affairs aimed at denigrating its leaders and institutions and, yet again, manipulating public opinion to justify the inevitability of war.
It is to be regretted that powers outside the continent are now instigating other African countries in the region to precipitate war as a means of solving a problem that, in the Angolan government’s view, can and should be solved peacefully.
As the Angolan government understands it, the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is an African affair and it is up to Africans to play the leading role in dealing with it. The African Union, using all the means at its disposal, should therefore assume responsibility for this leadership to prevent the current conflict from irreversibly deteriorating into a human catastrophe.
