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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Ivory Coast
Index
Houphouët-Boigny treated foreign policy as his personal
domain.
Following independence, his long-term foreign policy
objective had
been to enhance economic development and political
stability in
Côte d'Ivoire. That objective was manifested in foreign
policies
that sought, first, to maintain an organic relationship
with
France, Côte d'Ivoire's principal and most consistent
donor and,
second, to control the regional environment in order to
guarantee
access to cheap labor from Mali and Burkina Faso.
Although Côte d'Ivoire eschewed close links with the
Soviet
Union and its allies, Ivoirian policymakers were nominally
disposed
toward treating all foreign powers equally. One former
minister of
foreign affairs insisted that Côte d'Ivoire was the foe of
no
ideology or any regime. Nevertheless, Côte d'Ivoire had no
diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union from 1969, when
relations
with Moscow were severed, until February 1986. Only a
month
earlier, the cabinet had approved a measure to reestablish
ties
with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, the German
Democratic
Republic (East Germany), and the People's Democratic
Republic of
Korea (North Korea). Relations with Romania and Poland had
already
been re-established several years earlier.
Closer to its borders, Côte d'Ivoire alternatively
befriended
or attempted to isolate the rulers of the five states that
surrounded it: Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and
Ghana.
Recognizing that "the oasis never encroaches upon the
desert,"
Houphouët-Boigny sought to cultivate mutually beneficial
ties with
these five states, while allowing economic and political
differences to persist. Military leaders in the
neighboring states
allowed their nationals to enter the Ivoirian labor pool,
which
eased a serious unemployment problem in their respective
countries.
Through the Council of the Entente (Conseil de l'Entente),
in which
Côte d'Ivoire is by far the dominant power and largest
contributor,
the Ivoirians aided Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, and Togo.
Houphouët-Boigny also scored a diplomatic triumph in 1985
when he
brokered a peace agreement ending the border conflict
between
Burkina Faso and Mali. Houphouët-Boigny also facilitated
Guinea's
return to the franc zone.
Data as of November 1988
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