World leaders must keep pressure on Ivory Coast rebels and President Laurent Gbagbo to fulfill pledges to implement their long-stalled peace accord, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday. "We all hope that this time around it is serious and they are going to go back and honor their commitments," Annan said as he returned to U.N. headquarters from last week's signing of a new agreement to help Ivory Coast get over its civil war. "I saw the spirit in the room when they signed the agreement, how relieved they all seemed to be. And we need to maintain the pressure on them to implement it," he said. After two days of tough talks in Ghana's capital Accra, the Ivorian foes set a timetable for political reforms and the start of rebel disarmament, raising hopes of an end to a crisis that has left the world's top cocoa grower split in two. The former French colony's 16 million people "are tired and want to get on with their lives, and this places greater responsibilities on the leaders to really bear in mind the needs of the people and the needs of the nation," Annan said. The deal signed in Accra gives Gbagbo until the end of September to make sure measures first agreed on in 2003 are adopted by parliament and to change a constitutional clause preventing an opposition leader from running for president. Once the political reforms have gone through, rebels holding the northern half of the West African country have promised to start laying down their guns by mid-October. Ivory Coast plunged into civil war after a failed coup in September 2002. The conflict, in which thousands died and more than a million were forced from their homes, was declared over last year. But the country remains split between the government-held south and a rebel-held north, with French and U.N. peacekeepers policing the cease-fire line.
