I Coast pins hope on Mbeki

2005-04-01 17:52

Pretoria - Ivory Coast officials on Friday said on Friday they pinned hope on a weekend peace summit convoked by President Thabo Mbeki, who is trying to mediate an end to the west African country's lingering civil conflict.

"I am quite optimistic," said Silvere Nebout, Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo's special adviser on communications.

Nebout, in an interview to AFP, took a dig at former colonial ruler France, which brokered the first peace accord to end a rebellion in the north of the world's top cocoa grower at Linas-Marcoussis, a small town outside Paris.

"President Thabo Mbeki is playing his role as a mediator very well until now," he said. "He is meeting with all the protagonists regularly and even people in the street and those in parliament unlike before."

"It's not like Marcoussis where the future of Ivory Coast was decided in a rugby stadium outside Paris," he said.

The Pretoria meeting, which begins on Sunday and draws leaders from the Ivorian government, the opposition, as well as the rebels, comes at a crucial time for Ivory Coast, occurring the day before the mandate of 10 000 French and UN peacekeepers is set to expire.

Gbagbo's supporters are awaiting this keenly, while the rebel New Forces have made no secret of their dread.

France, accused of being too close to the conflict in its former colony, has warned that now is the time for all sides to get "serious", an admonition that has sat poorly with hard-line government supporters who are timing a new round of anti-French protests to follow the Pretoria meeting.

France 'not relevant now'

Gbagbo's technical adviser on communications Richard Assamoa Ossey, meanwhile, launched a broadside at French President Jacques Chirac who he claimed had stated that "Mbeki does not know the soul of west Africa".

"Mbeki knows Africa, like Laurent Gbagbo. France is not relevant now. Seventy percent of the population in Ivory Coast is under 30 and do not know French colonisation. It's the time of the African renaissance."

Ossey also heaped scorn on former Ivorian prime minister Alassane Ouattara, who was barred from contesting controversial presidential elections won by Gbagbo on the strength of a disputed constitutional law that bars anyone who is not 100% Ivorian from standing for the top job.

The Ivorian parliament had debated the law but Gbagbo insists that it has to be put to a referendum, as Ossey said "because he cannot by himself sign something that will allow the first Vietnamese to land in Ivory Coast to contest the presidency".

With international patience wearing thin, and global resources stretched beyond capacity, Mbeki must come up with his first significant breakthrough in the five months since he shouldered mediation efforts for the African Union.

Nebout said Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo had yet to make up his mind on whether he wanted French and UN peacekeepers to remain in Ivory Coast.

- AFP