UN troops who fled when rioting mobs attacked their bases in the west of war-divided Ivory Coast in January are preparing to return to the volatile region, the mission's top peacekeeper said on Thursday.
Bangladeshi troops abandoned four bases at the height of anti-UN riots across the government-controlled south after shooting dead five youths who tried to steal weapons from a UN base in the western town of Guiglo.
Local youths and militia looted the offices of UN and other international aid agencies when they left, causing more than $3 million of damage and leaving thousands of refugees in nearby camps without supplies or assistance.
General Abdoulaye Fall, the mission's chief peacekeeper, said UN troops from nearby Benin who were already working in the country would be transferred to the western bases, though he would not say if peacekeeping numbers there would be increased.
"Preparation is continuing for the redeployment of the positions previously occupied by the UN in (the west)," Fall, from Senegal, told reporters during a news conference at the UN mission headquarters in the economic capital Abidjan.
"We need to be there to accompany the peace process, to provide assistance to the government for the (disarmament) programme and the electoral process," he said.
The leader of a powerful Guiglo-based militia, Maho Glofiei, has said he is opposed to UN troops returning but has called on aid workers to come back to the region.
The riots erupted when several thousand "Young Patriot" youths loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo took to the streets in protest at what they said was meddling by foreign mediators.
The mediators are overseeing implementation of a UN plan pushing for reunification and elections by the end of October.
The protesters hurled rocks and petrol bombs at UN bases and attacked their vehicles until riot leaders called off the protests after four days.
Ivory Coast has been divided into a rebel-held north and government south since a 2002-03 civil war which grew out of a failed coup against Gbagbo.
A three-year old peace process has been bogged down by political deadlock and on-off violence but analysts have been encouraged by progress achieved in recent weeks by a new prime minister tasked with carrying out the demands of the UN plan.
The new premier, central banker Charles Konan Banny, managed to bring Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro together for historic face to face peace talks in the capital Yamoussoukro last week, together with leaders of the main opposition parties.
Soro has since announced he will take up his ministerial post in a recently installed reconciliation government and the independent electoral commission has begun its work after a months-long dispute over its political composition was resolved.
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