Ivory Coast cocoa growers fear to return to farms

"WAIT AND SEE"

Some of those who have carried on farming in the west live with the daily fear of violence. In June last year, around 100 people were killed in a massacre in the town of Duekoue about 40 km (25 miles) north of Guiglo. Sporadic attacks over the last few months have claimed more lives.

French troops, who police a ceasefire between government and rebel sides alongside U.N. peacekeepers, say the risk of attacks rises at harvest times as buyers' cash flows into the bush.

Some analysts fear a spiral of attacks and reprisals could trigger a more widespread civil conflict in the west.

"I'm scared to go back," said Mamadou Yameogo, another Burkinabe farmer who moved into the Guiglo camp in January 2003.

"I don't know if they will accept us ... It hurts because I have worked and sweated in those fields," he said.

Yameogo hopes the struggling peace process will reunite the country and calm ethnic hatreds. The peace plan has seen timid progress this year, although diplomats say there is little hope of organizing elections by the end of October as planned.

This week, rebels said they would not accept Gbagbo remaining in power after the October 31 deadline for polls - just the latest flare-up in ever-simmering political tensions.

Meanwhile, farmers' children grow up in the camp's extended family, playing and chasing chickens among the stacks of wooden logs and fires. Some farmers grow corn and rice in small fields around the camp to supplement their World Food Program rations and earn money selling any surplus.

But Zoungrana's 25-year-old son Ibrahim, clad in a torn T-shirt and ripped trousers, said he was itching to leave.