"President Alassane Ouattara decided to give the presidential pavilion to welcome President Laurent Gbagbo," declared the secretary general of the pro-Gbagbo Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) Assoua Adou, at a press conference on Monday. He hailed "a strong message" and thanked "solemnly" Alassane Ouattara "for this gesture" in favor of national reconciliation.

The former Ivorian president will return to his country on a regular flight from Brussels which is scheduled to land at 15:45 (local time and UTC) at Abidjan's international airport, Assoa Adou recalled.

While the secretary general of the FPI-GOR no longer speaks of a triumphal welcome at the airport, he wants to emphasize the spirit of reconciliation that should animate activists. "This gentleman is arriving and before arriving, he tells us: lead a national campaign for national reconciliation, because Ivory Coast must come together, the country's children must come together," declared Assoa Adou. "We must move toward progress and reconciliation. So I ask all these supporters to be in that spirit, not to respond to provocations – because they will provoke us – to avoid provocations, not to respond to insults and to say to all those who demonstrate to say they are not satisfied: the essential thing is to come together to rebuild a country as a country, a country of brotherhood as our national anthem says."

The current Ivorian president authorized his former rival to return to Ivory Coast after his acquittal of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague in late March.