Abidjan, 2 June 2009...The head of the UN police in Côte d'Ivoire, Pierre André Campiche, and Deputy Force Commander Benjamin Freeman Kuzi participated on Tuesday in the first weekly military meeting aimed at creating a discussion framework for monitoring the Fourth supplementary accord to the Ouagadougou Political Agreement.

Speaking at the end of the meeting, Mr. Campiche explained that the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) had come to receive requests for support from the Ivorian political and military actors and help them to apply the Ouagadougou Political Agreement effectively.

At the meeting, held in the Office of the Special Representative of the Facilitator in Côte d'Ivoire, Boureima Badini, participants were updated on the deployment of mixed units to ensure the security of the ongoing electoral process, according to the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Forces Nouvelles (FAFN), Gen. Soumaila Bakayoko.

"We also broached the problems that the military encounter in the field in carrying out their mission, particularly the logistical difficulties," he said after the meeting, in which the Ivorian Defence and Interior ministers, Michel Amani N'Guessan and Désiré Tagro respectively, participated.

The two ministers welcomed the meeting between the main military and civilian actors in the Ivorian process, noting that the objectives of the encounter included identifying the problems together and resolving them. "We are fully in the military part of the Ouagadougou Political Agreement, in particular the Fourth accord," Mr. Tagro said.

For his part, Mr. Amani N'Guessan noted the need for better coordinated action. "The political agreement is an agreement," he said. "Now we need to look, in a technical manner, at the financial problems, the problems with the framework for taking care of newly redeployed persons, the mission of the operation itself and a certain number of technical points," he stressed, announcing that 500 members of the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) had been redeployed thus far in Bouaké and 100 FAFN members in Abidjan.