UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned government and rebel forces in Ivory Coast on Monday to carry out the terms of their peace agreement quickly or risk sliding back into civil war.
The U.N. leader said during a U.N. Security Council meeting that he was deeply concerned by the current stalemate in the West African nation, created when Forces Nouvelles rebels withdrew from a national unity government set up under the peace deal concluded earlier this year.
"Unless urgent steps are taken to resolve that impasse, the tenuous security situation in the country could deteriorate further," Annan said. "There is clearly a danger that Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) could slip back into conflict."
Annan spoke as a delegation of foreign ministers from Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Senegal lobbied the Security Council to deploy U.N. peacekeepers in Ivory Coast.
But Annan said he wanted to send an assessment team to the region before making recommendations to the 15-nation council.
The foreign ministers, accompanied by the head of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, were scheduled to travel to Washington on Tuesday to make the same case in talks with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer and once a model of stability in West Africa, has been torn by civil war since September 2002 when rebel soldiers from the north of the former French colony mutinied against the government.
Although the fighting was declared over in July, rebels still hold the north and some 4,000 French troops and 1,300 ECOWAS troops are monitoring a shaky cease-fire.
France and ECOWAS would like the existing force to be incorporated into an expanded U.N. mission. But Washington has until now led the opposition to the move.
While the United States is helping support the ECOWAS troops, its costs would rise dramatically if the force were transformed into a U.N. operation, because Washington pays 27 percent of the U.N. peacekeeping budget.
After the West African delegation made its pitch to the Security Council, U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the United States did not rule out the idea of a U.N. peacekeeping force but would await Annan's report before deciding.
"We are leaving here very encouraged," Ghanaian Foreign Minister Nana Akufo-Addo told reporters. "We will continue our discussions in Washington tomorrow."
