Abidjan — South African President Thabo Mbeki, the current chairman of the African Union (AU), was among the leaders who gathered in Cote dIvoires economic capital, Abidjan, Wednesday, for a regional summit to find ways to end the five-month rebellion.
Presidents Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali and Nigers Mamadou Tandja, the vice-president of Ghana, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, and Nigerias foreign minister, Sule Lamido - as well as Mbeki - designated the Togolese leader, Gnassingbe Eyadema, as coordinator of the six-nation Economic Community of West African States contact group on Cote dIvoire.
The military revolt in Cote dIvoire has became the first real test of the newly-established continental union's pledge to ensure conflict prevention and resolution in Africa. Mbeki told the inaugural AU summit in July that the continent must seek to ends its own wars.
Wednesdays Ecowas summit did not break much new ground. But Mbeki told CNNs Jeff Koinange and allAfrica.coms Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, that he felt the decisions reached were a first step, to bring the Cote dIvoire government and rebels to the negotiating table and open the way for a return to peace.
How did the meeting go?
The deployment of a monitoring force, to ensure that the ceasefire is sustained, and the appointment of the coordinator, President Eyadema, to lead negotiations on a daily basis, I think that those are important decisions. They should enable this matter to move forward quite quickly. It is critical that there should be movement quite fast. The Ecowas heads of state and leaders of delegations that were here are really looking forward to ensuring that first deployments occur in less than two weeks. As you know, that is a force that will be put together from different countries, but that is the speed with which they want to move and I think that is correct.
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Are you optimistic that peace will return to this country?
I think these are the important first steps, the deployment and the engagement of real negotiations to sort out - as the communiqué says - both matters that might have to do with professional problems as well as the political problems. But I think after that, the Ivorians will have to look at the larger questions as to what lay at base of all of these matters, but I think a good beginning is being made.
Which are the larger questions you say Ivorians will have to explore?
You have seen, all of a sudden, that there was instability which there had not been in this country, suddenly from 1999. There was a military coup and all sorts of things have happened since then. It surely must mean there were some underlying tensions there - I am quite sure that the Ivorians would know better, but there must be. You couldnt have those many decades of stability in this country and all of a sudden, things just go wrong during a short period of time. There has to be some reason for that.
You havent met the rebels, but do you feel there is a commitment from the rebels?
Thats what were told.
