IVORY Coast leader Alassane Ouattara will meet his predecessor and former rival Laurent Gbagbo on July 27 for their first talks since Gbagbo’s return home after a nearly 10-year absence, the presidency said on Thursday.
The long-awaited talks are widely seen in Ivory Coast as a key to easing the country’s simmering political tensions.
The meeting will take place in the presidential palace, spokesman Amadou Coulibaly told a press conference, adding that the pair had been “in touch” by phone in early July.
Ouattara and Gbagbo headed rival factions in a post-election conflict in 2010-11 that claimed several thousand lives.
Gbagbo, 76, was arrested in April 2011 and hauled before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity resulting from the violence.
He was acquitted in January 2019, a decision that was upheld in March this year and enabled him to return home
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