Ivory Coast's bishops yesterday condemned the "unprecedented national and international plot" they said was preventing the west African country from pulling itself out of a devastating five-month war. In an address to the nation the bishops blamed the country's politicians for its current crisis. "Your calculations and sometimes unnatural alliances, your lies and tricks have led us into the war that we have endured for several months," they said.
"We invite you to pull yourselves together and repair the damage caused to the people of Ivory Coast, or you will have on your conscience the blood of thousands of people who have lost their lives because of you." The bishops also attacked the international community, which, they said, was "pitilessly taking advantage of the splits caused by the current painful events to get involved in the game."
"It (the international community) appears largely unconcerned by the tragedy that has faced the inhabitants of this country for nearly six months now.
"It is shamelessly and blatantly indifferent and its silence is both astonishing and worrying," the bishops said.
The former French colony of Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer and once the economic powerhouse of west Africa, plunged into crisis on September 19, 2002, when mutinous soldiers began fighting loyalist troops. Since then the rebels have seized the mainly Muslim northern half of the country and most of the west.
The conflict has sent the economy into a nose-dive and led to a huge exodus of migrant workers from other countries in the region. On January 24 the government, opposition and rebels signed a peace agreement that was brokered by France. But the politicians and rebels have given diverging interpretations to the accord and the new power-sharing government it was supposed to create has yet to be formed.
The bishops criticised Paris for its handling of the crisis, attacking "the ambiguous, confused role of the French authorities and their beating about the bush".
"Why do they play this double game?" they asked. The church leaders said several powers were "coveting" Ivory Coast. Abidjan has accused neighbouring Burkina Faso and Liberia of supporting the rebels and government supporters have accused France of trying to increase control over its former colony.
"We fervently hope that our numerous friends in France, Burkina Faso, Mali and Liberia... can bring their leaders to reason if it is true that they are implicated," the bishops said.