state-owned television that an agreement had been reached.
President
Alassane Ouattara's government has been trying to restore order for four days
after 8,400 mutineers took control of the second-biggest city, Bouake, and are
present in cities and towns across the country.
Heavy gunfire
on Monday also paralyzed much of Abidjan, the commercial capital, and the
western port city of San Pedro.
Defence
Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi said on state television late on Monday:
"To end the stalemate and avoid any more bereavement of families, the army
chief of staff held talks with the soldiers on Sunday and Monday ... The talks
have resulted in an arrangement to end the crisis."
But two
spokesmen for the mutineers confirmed that the government's proposal had been
rejected.
"They
proposed 5 million CFA francs ($8,356.17) to be paid tomorrow (to each
soldier). But we want 7 million to be paid in one payment and
immediately," Sergeant Seydou Kone, one of the spokesmen, told Reuters.
Ivory Coast
- emerging from a decade of political crisis capped by a 2011 civil war as one
of the world's fastest growing economies - is the biggest producer of cocoa and
London futures LCCc2 climbed to a five-week high on Monday.
And while
Ouattara, 75, secured a second term in a landslide poll victory in 2015, he has
struggled to heal deep divisions that have made the country's own military,
cobbled together from rival rebel and loyalist factions, its greatest security
threat.
The
government paid the mutineers - most of them former rebels who helped Ouattara
to power - 5 million CFA francs ($8,400) each to end an earlier uprising in
January.
But it has
struggled to keep a promise of a further payment of 7 million CFA francs after
a collapse in the price of cocoa caused a revenue crunch.
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