South African President Thabo Mbeki is due to travel to Côte d’Ivoire in the coming days on an African Union mission to defuse the crisis in the West African country, an AU official said on Sunday.
”Mr Mbeki will arrive in the next days in Côte d’Ivoire, but we don’t have the confirmation of the precise date of his arrival,” said the official at AU headquarters here told AFP on condition of anonymity.
AU leaders on Sunday mandated Mbeki ”to undertake an urgent mission in consultation with the chairperson of the AU commission, with a view to promoting a political solution” in Côte d’Ivoire, following a dramatic escalation of violence which has embroiled French peacekeepers there.
It was not immediately clear when the mission would leave, nor who would take part in it.
The decision was taken ”as a follow-up to the decision adopted at the Otta AU-Ecowas consultation,” the AU said in a statement, referring to a meeting in Otta, Nigeria, on Saturday of the AU and the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas).
Nigeria’s Olusegun Obasanjo was joined at the meeting by the head of the African Union Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, and by Ghana’s Foreign Minister Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who represented the 15-nation Ecowas West African regional bloc.
An AU source said that Mbeki would try to bring Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo and opposition leader Alassane Ouatarra into negotiations along with the Gabonese and Burkina Faso presidents Omar Bongo and Blaise Compaore.
Mbeki said on Friday that Africa’s failure to resolve the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s top cocoa producer, posed ”an immense and urgent challenge” to the continent and to the new African Union, which he currently heads.
”As Africans, we must openly admit the reality that we have failed to help the Ivorians to end the crisis in their country,” Mbeki wrote in his weekly letter, posted on the African National Congress (ANC) website on Friday, of the crisis that erupted in Côte d’Ivoire with a rebel uprising on September 19.
”It was precisely because of this African failure that France made a military, political and diplomatic intervention to help move Côte d’Ivoire towards peace,” he said.
”And yet the crisis in this sister African country has thrown up precisely the sort of challenges that require African solutions,” Mbeki said, urging the AU and other African institutions to renew efforts to restore peace in Côte d’Ivoire.
The AU on Saturday sharply rebuked the Côte d’Ivoire government, saying: ”This escalation clearly contradicts the process of national reconciliation.”
In a statement on Sunday the AU again condemned a government air strike which had killed nine French peacekeepers and a United States civilian in Bouake, in the centre of the West African country.
It also condemned the violence prevailing in Abidjan, including the attacks on the property of opposition members and of the media, as well as on foreign citizens and property, especially French citizens. – Sapa-AFP