By Peter Murphy ABOISSO, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Staring bewildered at the floor and fiddling nervously with their hands, three shoeless girls mumble details of how they were smuggled to work in Ivory Coast as plain clothes police officers clatter away at typewriters. Four boys and six young men sit outside on a stone floor waiting to be interviewed along with Lambo Zouglou, 34, the farmer who took them from his native village about 600 km (375 miles) away in northern Togo to grow manioc or work as nannies. "It was to flee poverty in Togo that he brought these children here with the parents' blessing so they would have the means to eat," said Commissioner Diangosse Maxime Mobio. "(Zouglou) said they were only getting two meals a week." Mobio's officers wear plain clothes to interview the children instead of their usual military fatigues to make the youngsters feel more at ease -- a tip from a recent Interpol training course to help them better combat child trafficking. Ivory Coast's cocoa, coffee, rubber, palm oil, pineapple and banana plantations make it a magnet for workers from across West Africa, including children, many sent with traffickers by willing parents hoping for a share in the proceeds. Some traffickers run large criminal operations but many others are farmers like Zouglou who, said he planned to employ the boys in Ivory Coast as labourers. He dodged the border post from Ghana by crossing through bush. But when he arrived in the nearby town of Aboisso to find the streets empty after a rare armed attack at a border post, he led the group to a police station to find a safe shelter. Now he may face charges of child trafficking and clandestine immigration. None of the group carried ID cards or passports. "He thought that coming here he would never have problems with the police once over the border," Mobio said. "He won't be freed. He will go to court to answer for his acts," he said. POVERTY PUSH Visibly nervous as he spoke, Zouglou, whose young niece was among the seven minors, said he thought both the children and adults in the group would have a better life in Ivory Coast, and said he did not fully understand why he was being detained. "Bringing the little ones wasn't good. But one of them, I took pity on his father. He said if I would take his son, he was sure he was strong and he'd work hard," he said. The children, wearing the only grubby clothes they had and speaking through an interpreter, would utter little more than their name and age. But shy and skinny Paulene Yacoubou, who said she was 10, said she had now changed her mind and wanted to go home. Some of the older boys, already accustomed to farm work in Togo and not attending school, said they wanted to stay. Mobio said police were only now becoming sensitised to child smuggling after recent training by Interpol and an awareness campaign run by Germany's international cooperation body, GTZ targeting farmers and villagers close to Aboisso. Police have been trained to spot trafficked children among the hundreds of coach passengers who pass through Aboisso each day after crossing over the border with Ghana. Security forces found 65 such children in 2006, the GTZ says, most of them from neighbouring Burkina Faso to the north. Michel Seka, of GTZ, said if they chose not to go home, the children would be given accomodation and vocational training at centres in Ivory Coast until the age of 18. He said repatriating the children against their will was usually futile. Impoverished parents were likely to keep trying to send their children back, creating an uphill battle for police and volunteers trying to eradicate child trafficking. "There were parents who sold a sheep to get the money to pay for their transport. Even the village chief knew about the trip," said Zouglou.
