For the first time in four months, rebels in Ivory Coast are to attend a cabinet meeting on Monday as a first step toward re-launching the moribund peace process in the divided west African state.
"We have asked ministers from the (rebel) New Forces to attend the council of ministers meeting and to defend the cause of peace," said Guillaume Soro, secretary general of the New Forces (FN), in a speech Saturday commemorating Ivory Coast's 44 years of independence.
"I believe that if all political parties follow suit ... it would mark a major political step for our country."
Monday's meeting is the first of a series of political reforms agreed to by the protagonists in Ivory Coast's 23 months of crisis, all of whom were represented at the summit in Ghana last month of 12 African heads of state and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Cabinet meetings since March have been boycotted by opposition ministers angered by a state-sanctioned crackdown on a pro-peace rally that killed at least 120 people, according to the United Nations. The rebels, who have occupied the north of the country since September 2002, had at the time denounced the crackdown as a flagrant violation of human rights.
President Laurent Gbagbo had responded to the boycott by sacking the ministers involved - including Soro - and replacing them on an interim basis by members of his Ivorian Popular Front party.
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