Johannesburg — The day after an emergency regional summit on the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, West Africa dispatched a high-level ministerial delegation to Abidjan to begin efforts to restore peace between the government of President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel soldiers.
Senior ministers from Nigeria, Ghana and Togo met Gbagbo Monday before preparing to embark on a mission further north to contact the dissident troops. This could mean traveling to their stronghold in the center of the country, Bouake, the second-largest city, as well as Korhogo, another strategic town in the north. Both are under rebel control. A slew of towns in between have also fallen into their hands.
The preparatory work of the West African mediation group is intended to clear the way for five regional leaders to head to Cote d'Ivoire to open negotiations, as agreed by West African heads of state at the summit in Ghana on Sunday. A presidential contact group was created, with a mandate to broker peace.
The bloody unrest in Cote d'Ivoire came as a jolt and spurred the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) into action, to try to stop the violence from spreading into what has become an increasingly volatile region.
But Ecowas is moving into uncharted territory. Little is known about the make-up, leadership or philosophy of the rebels, who the government says are behind a failed coup bid on 19 September.
They successfully coordinated what came as a surprise attack, catching the government and loyalist troops off guard. Though the mutineers failed to capture the main metropolis Abidjan, the rebels have virtually put the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire beyond government control.
But Ecowas warned Sunday that the dissident troops must air their grievances, negotiate with the government and find a way to resolve the conflict. If talks fail, then the rebels face the prospect of regional military intervention to maintain peace in Cote d'Ivoire, the world's number one coffee producer, with a population of 16 million.
"It all depends on the response we get from the rebels, if they choose the path of dialogue that has been offered to them," the Ecowas executive secretary, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, told Reuters News Agency. "Otherwise it means they would have torn up the Ivorian constitution. In which case they will be taking on the whole of the sub-region and indeed Africa".
The Ecowas chairman, Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, said all member countries had agreed to dispatch a peacekeeping force, under the region's military wing, Ecomog, if their mediation efforts did not succeed.
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There has been a tense standoff between pro- and anti-government forces for more than a week in Cote d'Ivoire, after bloody clashes in which hundreds of people were killed and many more wounded.
A nationwide nighttime curfew was extended by a week on Monday. But the Ivorian army spokesman indicated on state television that no new military offensive was planned, despite repeated government threats of an all-out battle. This would offer the necessary window for the Ecowas contact group of mediators to operate.
Last week, the rebels agreed a temporary cease fire to allow French and American troops time to evacuate mainly Western foreigners from Bouake and Korhogo. But rebels prevented Ivorians from fleeing the fighting.
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, on Monday threw his weight behind the West African peace initiative, which has already received the blessing of the African Union (AU), currently chaired by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Annan said in a statement that he supported the summit's "call for the insurgents to cease hostilities and for all parties to work towards a negotiated settlement to avert further violence, whose humanitarian consequences could be disastrous for Cote d'ivoire and the entire sub-region". On his return home after attending the Accra summit, Mbeki said: "If the situation is not resolved, there is the danger it might spread to other countries of West Africa".
Regional leaders appear determined to stop the rebellion in Cote d'Ivoire from exploding into the sort of brutal and grisly conflicts witnessed in neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone in recent years, leaving West Africa, including Cote d'Ivoire, awash with tens of thousands of refugees.
