Posted on 12/15/2002 11:50:15 AM PST by RCW2001
French troops deployed in conflict-torn Ivory Coast have been authorized to open fire on people who openly prevent the accomplishment of their mission, Colonel Emmanuel Morin told France Inter radio.
Asked about rebel groups who have pledged to fight the French troops, Morin said that he had received "clear" orders.
"It is a case of opening fire on any person manifestly preventing the accomplishment of our mission and... if I witness obvious power abuses, coming from any of the parties," he said.
Morin is head of a 500-strong contingent that is to deploy across the former French colony to enforce a shattered ceasefire between government soldiers and rebels who have held the northern half of the country for three months.
A first 150-strong contingent of paratroopers arrived in Ivory Coast's economic capital Abidjan late on Saturday, being sent to buttress some 1,200 French soldiers already in the west African country.
Morin's statement came the day after thousands of people demonstrated in rebel-held Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city, to denounce the French military presence.
"The aim of the operation has not changed in nature, it has changed in scale," Morin said.
What started as a peacekeeping operation must now "ensure that the ceasefire is actively enforced," he said, adding: "This is more of a dialogue-building mission than a coercive one."
Morin said that the troop reinforcements would be deployed Sunday evening, with a final contingent expected to arrive in the coming days.
"As early as this evening, I will be in a position to fulfil my mission," he said.
The Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast (MPCI) -- the country's main rebel group who staged the September uprising -- have slammed the French decision to reinforce troops.
Terming the conflict a purely Ivorian affair, the rebels charged that French intervention could turn the country into "another Rwanda", referring to a 1994 genocide in the central African country which left up to a million minority Tutsis and moderates from the Hutu majority dead.
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