Abidjan — After four days of fighting, in which loyalist and rebel troops traded control of Cote d'Ivoire's cocoa capital, Daloa, the town was reported to have been recaptured by government soldiers Tuesday, handing rebel forces their first significant military defeat since launching an uprising and failed coup almost a month ago.
But confusion reigned, with reports of continuing machine gun barrages and explosions in Daloa, the western cocoa centre, which the rebels declared they had seized on Sunday. The mutineers still hold the north and the key central city of Bouake, from where thousands of people have fled in panic at being trapped and under siege.
As the military stakes rise in Cote d'Ivoire, and regional mediation inches forward, President Laurent Gbagbo issued the rebels an ultimatum. He warned that the rebellion would be ended either by war or peace this week, after his army had received military supplies.
Speaking on state television on Monday night, Gbagbo told the 'people' in Bouake, as he referred to the mutineers, "we are coming, either to sign peace or to make war. But we can't wait beyond this week".
The rebels, meanwhile, are demanding the immediate and unconditional resignation of the president, calling his administration "dictatorial and fascist, bloody, barbarous and rotten". In addition to Gbagbo's departure, they say they want to organize fresh elections.
On Tuesday, the dissidents formalised their political plan of action and spoke, for the first time, through Guillaume Soro Kigbafori, the man named Monday as the secretary-general of their political wing, the Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI).
More details about the rebels also became available on the internet, on the website address www.supportmpci.org. Titled "Mouvement Patriotique de Cote d'Ivoire -- For a united and democratic Cote d'Ivoire, where every citizen lives under the protection of the law", the site is bilingual in both French and English.
Soro is a past leader of the influential Student Federation of Cote d'Ivoire (Fesci), and used to be known by his nom de guerre "Dr. Koumba".
In an interview with the French News Agency, he explained that the MPCI envisaged "as short a transition period as possible, about 8 months, with the aim of organizing democratic, transparent and historic presidential and legislative elections".
As he laid out a string of rebel demands, Soro insisted that Gbagbo must go and that the president had acted like a conman, "tricking everybody. He cannot continue holding the top job, because he is the champion con artist. He has never respected any agreement whatsoever."
Soro used equally strong language to say that Cote d'Ivoire's current problems were "artificially created by dodgy politicians" who had played games with "tribalism and ethnicity". "We must work together to restore unity, what we want is to install democracy" said Soro, who described the country as an "ethnic mosaic," made up of all peoples, not just the president's Bete ethnic group.
Soro and the mutineers, most of them reported to be kinsmen from the predominantly Muslim north, have charged that their part of Cote d'Ivoire is marginalized and the people discriminated against. The south, and Gbagbo's native west, are largely Christian and animist.
Colonel Jules Yao Yao, the loyalist army spokesman, appealed to Ivorians, on national television Tuesday night, not to take the law into their own hands. He also warned his compatriots to resist turning the current crisis into an ethnic or religious fight.
But such bitter, divisive tensions, tied up with politics, have already poisoned Cote d'Ivoire. It was once the country heralded as an oasis of peace and stability in turbulent West Africa and a welcoming economic magnate to millions of foreigners from neighbouring countries in search of a better life.
That reputation has vanished. Instead the Cote d'Ivoire crisis is being viewed as a catalyst that could explode into regional turmoil, as the country itself slides into a state of polarised panic among its people, who are witnessing their first fully-fledged rebellion.
The beleaguered cocoa town of Daloa appeared to mirror the splits in the country. Some of the Muslim residents, who hail from the north, cheered the arrival of the rebels. Reuters reported that on the other side of town, the southerners and Gbagbo's fellow Bete westerners were backing the government.
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Caught in the middle of the ideological crossfire, and trying to make sense of the Cote d'Ivoire conflict, are the West African mediators sent to broker a peace deal. Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, and Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), as well as his deputy, Malian General Cheik Oumar Diarra, held further talks with President Gbagbo on Tuesday. Gadio spent his weekend talking to the rebels.
The mutineers' announced Monday that they had withdrawn from the negotiations, because, they said, the government had flown in Angolan forces to fight with loyalist soldiers. State television twice read a statement from the Defence Ministry on Tuesday night, denying the rebel claims that Angolan military reinforcements had been sent to Cote d'Ivoire.
Despite the setback to the latest diplomatic initiative, and the increase in fighting, Gadio told reporters in Abidjan he remained hopeful a peaceful settlement could still be agreed.
