Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe was due to arrive here on Wednesday ahead of a Franco-African summit likely to be dominated by his controversial presence and the absence of embattled Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
Some 45 African heads of state are expected to join French President Jacques Chirac and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for the 22nd Franco-African summit, set to take place on Thursday and Friday at a Paris conference centre.
Chirac intends to place Africa at the top of France’s foreign policy agenda, his aides said on Tuesday, and will urge the international community to do more to bolster economic development initiatives across the continent.
The official theme of the biennial meeting is ”Africa and France, together in a new partnership”, but Chirac’s contentious invitation to Mugabe and the looming threat of renewed conflict in Ivory Coast are the pressing issues.
The European Union imposed a 12-month visa ban on Mugabe, his wife Grace and 70 associates a year ago, preventing them from entering EU territory amid global outrage over Mugabe’s repressive policies and dodgy human rights record.
Most at issue is his land reform policy of expropriating vast tracts of land from white farmers and redistributing some of it to landless blacks in a bid to rectify imbalances that were a legacy of British colonial rule.
Paris was allowed to invite Mugabe to the summit after obtaining a waiver to the ban in exchange for its continued support of the EU sanctions against Harare, which were formally extended for another year in Brussels on Tuesday.
Despite strong opposition from Britain, Chirac has defended the move as a way to confront Mugabe face-to-face over the political and economic turmoil engulfing his southern African country. Human rights groups have vowed to protest throughout Mugabe’s visit to Paris, with British activist Peter Tatchell set to ask a Paris court on Wednesday to issue a warrant for his arrest under French anti-torture law.
While Mugabe will make waves due to his participation in the Franco-African summit, Gbagbo will be more conspicuous by his absence, attributed by an aide to his need to ”stay with his compatriots” due to the crisis in Ivory Coast.
The conflict, sparked by a rebel uprising in mid-September, has torn the west African state in half, left its economy in tatters, and widened religious and ethnic divides.
It has also drawn former colonial ruler France into a diplomatic quagmire, with Gbagbo equivocating over the implementation of a French-brokered peace deal reached last month while French troops seek to keep the fragile peace.
Ivory Coast’s new Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, who is still struggling to form a government of national unity that would include rebel groups, will represent Gbagbo in Paris. The rebels claim that the peace accord — which ignited days of anti-French riots in France’s former colony — gave them the key interior and defence ministries in a power-sharing government and have demanded its implementation.
But the Ivorian armed forces and four major political parties have said they will not accept rebels in the government. ”President Gbagbo is acting like he’s still trying to buy himself some time. He just rearmed his forces — he has not abandoned the military option,” said a diplomatic source in Paris close to the situation.
Among the heads of state expected to attend the summit are Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI. More than 3 000 French police will be deployed to protect the visiting dignitaries and keep planned demonstrations under control. – Sapa-AFP