Abidjan — Reports from central Cote d'Ivoire Thursday said thousands of people behind rebel lines were streaming out of the city of Bouake, fearful that dissident troops would make good on their threat to launch a counter offensive against government forces who tried and failed to recapture the town earlier this week.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said up to 150,000 people had left Bouake since fighting erupted after a failed coup three weeks ago. A diplomatic mission launched by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) collapsed earlier this week after Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo refused to agree to a ceasefire.
However, Gbagbo is facing increased pressure to seek a negotiated settlement to the crisis. France, the former colonial power in Cote d'Ivoire which has sent logistical and military assistance as well as more than 1000 troops, has urged Gbagbo to sign a ceasefire with the rebels.
On Wednesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner held a 45-minute meeting with the Ivorian leader here in the main city, Abidjan. Kansteiner urged Gbagbo to adopt a "very tolerant line" to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. "We encourage President Gbagbo to open negotiations with his regional partners and also with the rebels," said Kansteiner, whose stopover in Cote d'Ivoire was part of a West African tour.
Gbagbo said Tuesday that he was ready to negotiate with the rebels if they laid down their arms. The gesture was immediately rejected by the insurgents. They said they could no longer trust Gbagbo, because he had only begun to mention dialogue after they had repulsed a loyalist army attack on Bouake this week.
Despite official announcements that Bouake had been 'liberated' on Monday, independent observers confirmed that the city was still in rebel hands, as are significant parts of northern Cote d'Ivoire.
Despite the talk of war on the ground, regional mediation efforts to restore peace to Cote d'Ivoire were revived on Thursday. The Senegalese Foreign Minister, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, was dispatched to Abidjan by his president, Abdoulaye Wade, who is the current Ecowas chairman.
Gadio's mission is to resume negotiations with the rebels, who first met an Ecowas ministerial contact group last week, when they agreed to a ceasefire proposal. Gbagbo's government said the regionally brokered deal would give legal status to an illegitimate rebellion. In a nationwide televised speech Tuesday, Gbagbo insisted that the dissidents must first surrender their weapons as a precondition to talks.
Most Ivorians support their president, asking why he should sign any agreement with the rebels, who now go by the name of the Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire. Their backers and financiers remain undeclared and unknown, and they are 'probably foreign,' is the almost unanimous answer from locals asked how they feel the conflict should be resolved.
The Senegalese foreign minister was scheduled to meet rebel representatives Thursday but had to postpone the rendezvous because of communication problems after a bad storm. Ecowas is desperate to stop the conflict in Cote d'Ivoire from continuing or spreading, with potentially crippling repercussions for the rest of West Africa.
Cote d'Ivoire is home to millions of immigrant workers from neighbouring countries who, in the halcyon days, were drawn like magnets to the West African eldorado and who helped build the nation into a regional power centre and the world's number one cocoa producer.
But tensions in recent years between Ivorians and foreigners have ballooned into more serious civil strife, often drawn along political, religious and ethnic lines. Neighbouring Burkina Faso, Niger, Ghana and Nigeria are among the countries that have already made contingency plans to evacuate their nationals, after hostile reprisal attacks which have targeted immigrants.
The bitter divisions in Cote d'Ivoire increasingly pit the predominantly Muslim north against the largely Christian south. Northerners complain that they have been marginalized, while southerners have been privileged at their expense. And since the coup, it has emerged that many of the mutineers are disgruntled soldiers, who belong firmly in this disaffected camp. They charge that they are discriminated against within the armed forces. Among the original grievances of those in line to be cashiered were demands for immediate reintegration into the army.
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Since September 19, when the rebels launched a well-coordinated attack on Cote d'Ivoire's three key cities -- Abidjan, the southern coastal metropolis and economic capital, the central crossroads of Bouake, and the northern heartland of Korhogo -- what began as a mutiny has swiftly become a more serious conflict, with devastating regional implications.
Hundreds of people, including the Interior Minister and a former military leader, have been killed in the violent uprising. Hundreds more have been injured and thousands of people have been displaced and are homeless
