Political rivals in Côte d’Ivoire will meet in the country’s administrative capital, Yamoussoukro, on Monday to try to settle their differences against a background of growing United Nations impatience.
Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny has summoned President Laurent Gbagbo, rebel New Forces (FN) chief Guillaume Soro and leaders of the political opposition Henri Konan Bedie and Alassane Ouattara for a private, face-to-face encounter, their first for six months.
The five will meet again in New York on September 20 when the UN will bring pressure on them to reach a deal after four years of deadlock and backsliding.
Monday’s meeting is aimed at ”assessing the peace process and smoothing out differences, particularly the question of public hearings”, the first step in updating electoral registers.
These have in recent months become the focus of the tensions between Gbagbo’s supporters and the opposition, acting as a brake on the process of ending the crisis, which involves disarmament of the warring parties and new elections.
Some progress has been made: a UN timetable for ending the crisis has been adopted and some senior civil servants have returned to the rebel-held north of Côte d’Ivoire.
But in general terms little has changed in the four years since September 2002 when an unsuccessful coup split the country in two, a government-held south and a rebel-controlled north.
”For a year we have not seen any real movement forward,” said a European diplomat. ”Lots of agreements have been signed but not put into effect. You do not feel there is a real will to move forward, either on the part of President Gbagbo or of the rebels who derive a certain benefit from their situation.”
At the end of August, the UN had to admit that the deadline of October 31 for presidential elections, set by the Security Council in the autumn of 2005, was not going to be met.
”As things stand today, no one can say when and how the elections will take place,” said a Western diplomat who did not want to be named.
Faced with this stalemate, the UN has a difficult path to tread. On the one hand there is the temptation to shake things up, with the risk of reviving tensions, or on the other it could let the main Ivorian players work out their differences by themselves, and see the process bog down forever.
The hope is that the Yamoussoukro meeting will make some movement to consensus possible.
”I would like the five parties to find, as responsible men, solutions to get out of the crisis,” the head of the UN operation in Côte d’Ivoire, Pierre Schori of Sweden, said on Thursday.
That task falls to Banny, appointed prime minister by the international community at the end of 2005 to supervise the disarmament of the various parties to the conflict and organise the elections.
But he has had major problems in asserting himself against Gbagbo, who has no intention of yielding the levers of power before the poll.
”If Banny has called this meeting, it is because he must have something up his sleeve,” said the European diplomat.
A number of possibilities have been discussed unofficially in recent days. One would be the appointment of Ouattara, Bedie and Soro as vice-presidents, copying the example set in the Democratic Republic of Congo where President Joseph Kabila has four vice-presidents drawn from his political rivals.
The idea was floated recently by Gabon’s President, Omar Bongo.
”It is a cosmetic measure but it would have the advantage of sending the UN positive signals,” said the European diplomat.
What comes out of Yamoussoukro will be scrutinised by the International Working Group, which meets on September 8 in Abidjan. Its findings will be a major element at the New York meeting 12 days later. — Sapa-AFP