20110925
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ivory Coast called on Friday for international financial backing for a West African security plan in a volatile border region to help protect elections next month in Liberia.

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara said he discussed the emergency plan on Thursday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. It would involve the deployment of security forces from Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria and focus on his country's troubled southwest border area with Liberia.

Ivory Coast authorities said last weekend the United Nations and regional governments were sending additional soldiers to the forested border area after attacks on villages by suspected mercenaries from Liberia.

Ouattara, speaking in Washington, said the security initiative would seek to ensure Liberia's October 11 presidential election went ahead peacefully. It would also look to protect parliamentary elections in Ivory Coast planned for December 11.

Under the plan agreed on with regional heads of state at a meeting in Nigeria earlier this month, Ivory Coast would be providing 320 soldiers and police, Ghana would send 300 and Nigeria would deploy about the same number, Ouattara said.

"We need $40 million, which we did not have in our budget," he added. Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, is still trying to get its economy back on track after a brief civil war following a disputed election late last year.

POROUS, FORESTED BORDER

Ouattara said security operations to halt the movement of armed mercenaries across the porous Ivorian-Liberian border required trucks, motorcycles and other technical assistance.

"When make a total package of this, we'll see how various countries can help us for the financing," Ouattara said, speaking at an event organized by the National Democratic Institute in Washington.

"We need the support quickly," he added.

Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, members of the so-called Mano River Union, have warned that insecurity in the border area represents a threat to West Africa's stability.

Ouattara said restoring security there would help bolster development of the sub-region's significant economic potential in mining, agriculture and hydroelectric power.

Ivory Coast's southwest has been fraught with ethnic strife for decades, largely centered on land rights between indigenous tribes and the migrants who now make up the backbone of Ivory Coast's cocoa industry.

Tensions between the two groups have reignited since last year's disputed election sparked a civil war that toppled incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, paving the way for Ouattara, who won the election, to take power.

The indigenous tribes in southwestern Ivory Coast and in nearby Liberia are believed to have supported Gbagbo, who was arrested in mid-April after fierce fighting.

Since Gbagbo's arrest, violence on the border has simmered on, although Ouattara said peace had been restored to practically all of Ivory Coast, including the economic capital, Abidjan.