Bid to stabilise I Coast
2004-07-28 09:55
Accra - President Thabo Mbeki will be one of several African leaders who are to use a summit on Thursday of protagonists in Ivory Coast's 22 months of crisis to impart the immediate need for a political solution to the conflict that has had grave implications for west Africa.
Co-hosted by Ghanaian President John Kufuor and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the two-day summit, which will also touch on the crisis in Sudan and the fledgling peace process in Liberia, is seen as a last-ditch attempt to revive the moribund peace process in Ivory Coast ahead of elections set for 2005.
That heads of state from across the world's poorest continent including Mbeki and Omar Bongo of Gabon will join Annan in Accra, underscores the importance of a stable Ivory Coast to Africa, Mike McGovern, the west Africa director of the International Crisis Group think tank told AFP.
ICG has warned that without concerted international efforts to engage Ivory Coast diplomatically there was a real risk of continued violence that could bleed across its borders.
Once a driver of the west African economic engine and a model of stability for a troubled region, Ivory Coast has been wracked by chaos since a failed coup against President Laurent Gbagbo in September 2002 spawned a divisive civil war.
Thousands of French and UN peacekeepers patrol a 400km "confidence zone" that cuts a wide swathe across the country of 16 million that remains divided between the rebel-held north and the government-run south.
A peace pact signed in January last year lies in tatters and a unity government has been paralysed, leaving legislation addressing catalysts of the rebellion including national identity and land ownership unresolved.
Tensions have intensified since March, when a brutal state-sanctioned crackdown on a pro-peace rally left some 120 people dead, according to a UN human rights commission.
A recent visit by a UN Security Council delegation hinted that targeted sanctions could be imposed should progress fail to materialise, while the possibility of an international intervention to help judge the most violent events over the past two years has not been ruled out.
Gbagbo's supporters insist that the rebels must disarm and surrender control of the north before the peace pact, which many of the most hardline elements consider a subversion of the existing Ivorian constitution, can be fully implemented.
His foes, who have arranged themselves in a loose coalition that includes his two main rivals and the political arms of the rebel movement, maintain that the French-brokered peace pact is the only way forward for the country and demand that pro-government militias be disbanded.
The summit, dubbed Accra III to denote the third Ghanaian-hosted attempt to resolve the crisis in Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, was conceived on the sidelines of the African Union summit earlier this month in Addis Ababa.
- SAPA