Ivory Coast's army has rejected a key part of the peace agreement aimed at ending the country's four-month-old civil war. The deal, signed in France on Saturday, stipulates that supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo should share power with rebels within a unity government. But in a letter to the president, the army says it will not accept the rebels taking over the defence and interior ministries under the accord. Guess the army's not insane...
Mr Gbagbo has not yet addressed the nation to explain the deal - which sparked fresh violent protests on Tuesday.
Still trying to think up an explanation... I'd go with "too much wine," myself, and try and forget it...
Senior military officers met Mr Gbagbo to express their objections. "We told him officially that the army does not agree with certain elements of the peace agreement," army spokesman Jules Yao Yao said.
Fairly definite statement there...
The BBC's Tom McKinley in Ivory Coast says the army's opposition puts the president in a seemingly impossible position. On Saturday he agreed to share power with the rebels - but without the support of his army he cannot keep his word. The French Government, for its part, again urged Mr Gbagbo to sell the agreement to those of his supporters who say too many concessions to the rebels have been made. "It is up to President Gbagbo to explain to the extremists of his camp the spirit in which (the agreement) was made," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said on Tuesday.
Gbagbo's the elected president. If it was this country, I'd be one of Villepin's "extremists," wanting to keep the government I'd voted for.