South African President Thabo Mbeki started a four-day African Union-sponsored visit to Côte d’Ivoire on Friday, where he will present a ”road map to peace” for the west African country, riven by more than two years of conflict and political crisis.
Mbeki arrived in the southern city of Abidjan late on Thursday and immediately went into talks with his Ivorian counterpart, President Laurent Gbagbo.
On Friday he held talks with key players in the stalled process to restore peace and stability in Côte d’Ivoire, and on Sunday he is due to travel to Bouake, the central headquarters of rebels whose uprising in September 2002 sparked the crisis.
”He [Mbeki] is meeting all the political role-players to present them with a plan, a roadmap to peace,” said Mbeki’s spokesman, Bheki Khumalo, on Friday.
Seen as a neutral figure in the peace process, Mbeki met Prime Minister Seydou Diarra on Friday morning for more than an hour at an Abidjan hotel, before later meeting Gbagbo at the presidential residence in the coastal city’s central business district.
At Gbagbo’s residence, decked out for the occasion with Ivorian and South African flags, Mbeki was welcomed with a military band and guard of honour before going into talks with the Ivorian leader.
Mbeki was expected to to meet members of the cabinet, representatives of the ruling Ivorian Popular Front and smaller parties, and the opposition alliance known as the G7, later on Friday .
Asked what Mbeki’s proposed package entailed, Khumalo said: ”We cannot make those details available in the media before they have been presented to the various role-players.We expect the details will be unveiled later during the president’s visit”
Neither Mbeki nor Gbagbo made a statement following their meeting.
The talks are believed to revolve around the issues of disarmament of fighters in Côte d’Ivoire, the reunification of the country — split into the rebel north and pro-Gbagbo south since the 2002 uprising — and constitutional reforms.
Mbeki visited the country early last month as part of an African Union mission aimed at restoring calm to Côte d’Ivoire after government air raids on rebel-held cities in the north marked a sharp escalation in the conflict.
The last of the air strikes hit a camp housing French peacekeepers in Bouake, killing nine of them and a United States aid worker. The French responded by attacking Ivory Coast’s tiny air force, and wiping it out.
That, in turn, sparked days of anti-French riots and demonstrations, led by a group of hardline backers of Gbagbo, the Young Patriots, during which, according to the Ivorian authorities, the French soldiers opened fire on and killed dozens of Ivorians and injured more than 2Â 000 others.
French officials have said their troops were responsible for the deaths of ”around 20” Ivorians.
African leaders fear that the unrest in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s leading producer of cocoa and once the economic powerhouse of west Africa, could spill across its borders and destabilise the volatile region.
Since his previous visit on November 9, Mbeki has met various groups and individuals from Côte d’Ivoire, including Simone Gbagbo, the highly influential wife of the president and one of the leaders of the Ivorian Popular Front.
He also met opposition leader-in-exile Alassane Ouattara, New Forces rebel leader Guillaume Soro and Diarra in his efforts to try to get the peace pact back on track.
Khumalo said Mbeki was accompanied by representatives from the AU’s Peace and Security Council, the European Union Commission, the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and the World Bank.
The mediation effort takes Mbeki back to the diplomatic challenge that he faced during his time as the first AU chairman in 2002 — when the northern Ivorian rebels tried to stage a coup against Gbagbo, accusing him and his government of disenfranchising the north.
A peace deal was signed in Marcoussis, France in January 2003 to bring the rebel leaders into a unity government, and a ceasefire was reached in May that year. Another agreement, reconfirming the commitment of all parties to the Marcoussis pact, was signed in Accra in July of this year.
Mbeki is due to wrap up his visit and return to South Africa on Monday. –
Meanwhile, the leader of a the Young Patriots on Friday called for a ”huge march” next week to ”demand the French army leave Côte d’Ivoire”.
”In memory of our comrades who fell under the bullets of the French army and to give moral support to the many wounded who are still in hospital, we call for a huge, peaceful march on December 11 at the Place de la Republique,” said Charles Ble Goude, head of the Young Patriots, at a press conference.
The aim of the march would be to ”demand that the French army leave Côte d’Ivoire because it can no longer call itself an impartial force”.
”We will take every security precaution to ensure that the march is peaceful,” he said.
The rallying point for the march, the Place de la Republique, is situated in the heart of Abidjan’s Plateau business district, around 10km from the permanent French military base at Port Bouet.
France sent extra soldiers to Côte d’Ivoire after the country plunged into civil war following a failed bid by rebels to oust Gbagbo on September 19 2002. The soldiers patrol a buffer zone separating the rebel north from the government south. Sapa-AFP