Ivory Coast Warlord Pledges to Disarm Forces

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — A renegade warlord here said Saturday that he was ready to lay down his arms as ordered by the new president, but that it would take time.

The warlord, Ibrahim Coulibaly, commands a heavily armed stronghold within Abobo, a poor neighborhood in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city.

President Alassane Ouattara on Friday ordered Mr. Coulibaly, who led two coups in Ivory Coast, to disarm or be forced to do so.

Mr. Ouattara also ordered all combat units back to their barracks — sending the former rebel forces who installed him in power to their stronghold in the central city of Bouake and the troops who fought for former President Laurent Gbagbo to their old military camps.

Mr. Ouattara said regular and paramilitary police officers would be redeployed to take over security.

“He said lay down your arms,” Mr. Coulibaly said of Mr. Ouattara’s order. “We will lay down our arms. It is not a problem.”

When asked why he had so many weapons in his stronghold, he said: “You don’t dispose of arms in the street. There has to be a strategy.”

Mr. Coulibaly said he wanted his forces to join the new army but was waiting to be invited.

He said he had 5,000 men under his command. But the actual number appears to be fewer than 1,000, based on The Associated Press’s assessments at his Abobo headquarters and at a college there where his commanders were training recruits.

Mr. Ouattara at first tried to distance himself from the former rebels fighting in his name when they began a lightning assault that took them to the gates of Abidjan within days. They had been accused of atrocities during the offensive.

But when his pleas for an international intervention to force Mr. Gbagbo from power went unheeded, he adopted the rebels s his forces and now calls them the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast.

Mr. Ouattara’s orders to disarm were made two days after the former rebels attacked Mr. Coulibaly’s forces at his stronghold but were repulsed.

Meanwhile, thousands of people from the mainly Muslim areas of Abobo cheered on Saturday when a commander told them at a gathering called by forces backing Mr. Ouattara that the war was over.

Sofi Dosso, the leader of the traditional hunters who live in tropical rain forests, said his forces were “ready to help disarm those who disobey the president’s commands.”

All the factions involved in the bloody four-month electoral conflict are accused of killing civilians, looting, burning homes and extorting money. On Wednesday, former rebel forces turned their guns on each other in the southwest cocoa port of San Pedro, forcing United Nations peacekeepers to intervene when they started firing rockets and mortar shells in the city’s downtown.

“We are ready to help disarm those who disobey the president’s commands,” Mr. Dosso said. “But right now, we are needed here to help in the disarmament process because we know the many people who are holding arms illegally.”