Côte d’Ivoire’s President Laurent Gbagbo is to start on Monday two weeks of talks with different groups in the country with a view to implementing a peace deal brokered by South Africa.
But he faces problems given the reluctance of rebel groups to lay down their arms, as well as reservations among his own supporters over the accord.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has called on Gbagbo to allow all candidates, including opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, to contest the presidential election due to be held in October.
But many of Gbagbo’s most loyal backers are implacably hostile to a return to the political stage of Ouattara, a Muslim from the north of the country whose father came from neighbouring Burkina Faso. Ouattara was disqualified from standing in the 2000 presidential poll because of doubts about his nationality.
Gbagbo’s first consultations will be with groups representing young people. There will also be talks with women’s organisations, trades unionists, traditional chiefs and MPs, among others, all broadcast live.
The exercise will end on May 3 when Gbagbo meets with representatives of the military.
The talks appear to be an effort by Gbagbo to give a popular legitimacy to his position at a time when many of his own supporters are unhappy about the Pretoria accord.
They hold Outtara, head of the Rally of Republicans (RDR) party, responsible for the crisis, to the point of blaming him for the armed uprising that began in September 2002 and led to the de facto partition of the country into the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south.
Government hardliners, including Gbagbo’s wife, Simone, and parliamentary Speaker Mamadou Koulibaly, have kept their silence, but some members of the president’s Ivorian Popular Front are already on the campaign trail as an open election approaches.
One significant indicator is the declaration by Charles Ble Goude, head of the intensely pro-Gbagbo ”young patriots”, that the ”October poll will be a contest between Côte d’Ivoire and France”.
Gbagbo’s two chief challengers are former president Henri Konan Bedie and Ouattara, nicknamed ADO, both of whom live in France.
Outtara is regularly accused by the Gbagbo camp of being sponsored by France.
”ADO is a candidate, ADO will be elected!” RDR secretary general Henriette Diabate told senior party workers on Saturday.
To calm his own backers, Gbagbo has been explaining that the Pretoria deal was a victory for his call for his ”first priority” — the laying down of weapons.
But rebels of the New Forces movement disagree, at least at the moment. At a recent meeting in the central city of Bouake, their stronghold, they refused to give immediate endorsement to the disarmament plan as demanded by government forces.
The timetable — which provides for a staged laying-down of arms — was discussed and the two sides are supposed to withdraw their heavy weapons from the front from Thursday.
But the rebels put off a decision until a meeting with government forces in the first week of May, after Gbagbo’s consultations have been completed. — Sapa-AFP