Abidjan, 3 December 2008... The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Côte d'Ivoire, Y.J. Choi, yesterday continued his consultations with Ivorian political leaders by meeting the President of the Ivorian Workers Party (PIT), Francis Wodié, who was accompanied by several of his members.

The discussions, which lasted 45 minutes, centred on the advances made in the peace process as well as the challenges which remain. Mr. Choi said that identification and voter registration operation was progressing despite logistical difficulties. "The numbers are very encouraging", he told the PIT delegation.

For his part, Mr. Wodié requested UNOCI's help for the holding of national consultations aimed at enabling all the political actors to be on the same wavelength, especially after the postponement of the presidential elections, initially scheduled for 30 November 2008. The objective, he told the press at the end of the meeting, is to arrive at elections and a definitive end to the crisis without any major incidents. "If the main responsibility falls on us the national political actors that we are, we think that there the international organizations should also take action so that both types of actions are complementary and do not conflict in any way", explained Mr. Wodié.

According to the leader of the PIT, given the deteriorating atmosphere and mounting insecurity, the idea of cooperation is the best idea because it will prevent the use of force and favour negotiations and dialogue within the framework of national consultation. "In order to organize this dialogue together we invite all Ivorians today rather than tomorrow, to become involved", said Mr. Wodié.

On the question of disarmament as a precondition for the holding of elections, Mr. Wodié thinks that « the important thing is certainly material disarmament but it's also important to disarm the mind, to restore the required confidence because if there it confidence then we will be able to resolve many problems and we think the door will be open for ending the crisis, which is what we all want", he concluded.