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West Africa: What Went Wrong with Ivory Coast's Peace Process - by Senegal's Foreign Minister
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INTERVIEW
5 March 2003
Posted to the web 5 March 2003
Charles Cobb and Akwe Amosu
Washington, DC
Attempts to resolve the civil war in Cote d'Ivoire show scant progress. Three rebel factions still hold Ivory Coast's north, and parts of the west. Over a thousand people have died and more than a million have been forced from their homes. The government of President Laurent Gbagbo holds the south of the country and the continuing conflict highlights longstanding political, ethnic and religious tensions.
A messy peace process and a negotiated agreement which, at first, provoked street protest and repudiation by key actors like the armed forces loyal to Gbagbo, have given way to a grudging, sullen acceptance that there is no other game in town.
Anti-French feeling in the south is running high after the French government brokered the Marcoussis agreement, even though French troops have played a vital role in underpinning the ceasefire. Sporadic fighting flares, nonetheless; rebels and their supporters are impatient about the time it is taking to implement the agreement.
Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, whose appointment came as a result of the peace agreement, has been shuttling back and forth to try and get all sides on board. He has warned he may step down if his attempt to form a government of national unity fails. He was nominated for the post as someone acceptable to both the rebels and the Gbagbo government but, faced with poor cooperation on both sides, he said this week that he was getting tired.
Governments in the region and others, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, have warned of the danger of 'contagion' - the possibility that the war in Cote d'Ivoire may spill across borders provoking conflict in other currently peaceful countries. The role of Liberia's president, Charles Taylor, with his government's history of fomenting war in Sierra Leone, is particularly troubling to observers who note the increasing conflict at the western border with Liberia, involving Liberian fighters.
One individual who has been at the centre of attempts to resolve the crisis is Senegal's foreign minister, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio. It was Gadio who successfully brokered the original ceasefire on October 17, 2002, less than two months after the fighting first began.
Inexplicably, however, Senegal - which was then leading the regional organisation, Ecowas - was suddenly sidelined in the peace process and the baton passed to Togo and President Gnassingbe Eyadema, the region's longest reigning president who himself came to power through a coup in 1967 and has been in power for thirty-five years.
Senegal was not included in the Contact Group charged with resolving the Ivorian crisis, despite having built relationships with all sides in the process or reaching a ceasefire. While little was said openly, behind the scenes it was clear that there were deep tensions in Ecowas on the issue, tensions which may have undermined the search for peace in Ivory Coast.
Foreign minister Gadio is in Washington, DC this week. He talked to allAfrica's Charles Cobb and Akwe Amosu about the continuing war in Liberia and the Ivorian peace process.
Things seem to have really run into the sands in Cote d'Ivoire. There is serious fighting flaring, Prime Minister Diarra says he is being made to look ridiculous, and there are so many players involved - the current Ecowas leader, Ghana's President Kufuor, the Comité de Suivi [follow-up committee], Togo's President Eyadema... What is supposed to be happening now and why are things are in such a mess?
I don't think we have that much confusion because the good news I was told yesterday [Monday March 3] is that a meeting is scheduled on Thursday between President Kufuor of Ghana and leaders of all political parties that were in Linas-Marcoussis [the site outside Paris where the Marcoussis agreement was negotiated].
I think Prime Minister Diarra will take this opportunity to present his government there. Personally, I know - for different reasons - that he is ready. He has a government that I believe is balanced. He is taking into account all peoples' concerns and preoccupations. And if he got the support he deserved from President Gbagbo, from the heads of different political parties, from what they call now "the new forces" - the rebel forces; if he gets the support he deserves, then he will make it.
This is a difficult situation for him, almost an embarrassment to be appointed prime minister a month ago; given the mandate to form a government and then to run into all these obstacles and delays. People telling you, "Okay, I will tell you my position but not today... tomorrow." So he is telling them that there is a cut-off date for him. He is saying: "If we cannot agree on something by the end of this week then perhaps I am not the man for this situation; you need someone else."
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He is a very humble person saying so because, the way I see him working, he is the man for this situation. He is a man of big heart and devotion. His family is in Senegal right now so he comes to visit us as often as he can and that gives us a chance to discuss with him all the time. This is a very committed man; he will surprise not only Africa, but the world, once he has revealed everything that he has done and prepared for his country.
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