Nairobi — West African leaders convened another crisis summit, Monday, to try to rescue peace talks on the three month conflict in Cote d'Ivoire, as the former colonial power, France, reinforced its military presence, dispatched more troops and strengthened their mandate, to prevent the country sliding into civil war.
Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo did not attend the talks, but Ghana's President John Agyekum Kufuor, Liberian leader Charles Taylor, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, were reported to have flown to Cote d'Ivoire to brief Gbagbo on their deliberations.
A full summit of West African leaders was scheduled for Wednesday in the Ghanaian capital, Accra.
Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo make up the six-nation regional contact group on Cote d'Ivoire, set up by the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) to try to resolve the crisis, with President Eyadema designated as the coordinator of the peace mediation effort.
Gbagbo's negotiators along with representatives of the main rebel Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI) were also invited to Monday's meeting at Eyadema's country retreat in Kara, 425km (265 miles) north of the capital Lome. The rival delegations have spent the past 7 weeks talking in Lome, but West African negotiators have made little progress bringing the two sides closer together.
"We hope that this meeting will allow us to put more pressure on both sides to achieve rapidly the signing of a global agreement," Togo's recently-appointed foreign minister, Roland Kpotsra, told reporters.
The Cote d'Ivoire crisis deepened last month with the emergence of two additional rebel groups in the west, near Liberia, complicating an already messy revolt in which hundreds of people were killed in the first month and tens of thousands more displaced.
The new rebel factions have not joined the original group of mutineers at the stop-start Togo talks in Lome or Kara. But their involvement in the war has further undermined the economy of the country, the world's number one cocoa producer and a key regional transport crossroads for its landlocked neighbours to the north
Since the failed coup in Cote d'Ivoire on 19 September, the country once considered the most stable in West Africa has been on the brink of civil war, poised to plunge the whole region into turmoil. But, despite the best efforts of Ecowas peace brokers, analysts say bickering among West African leaders - notably between Togo's Eyadema and Senegal's Wade, the current Ecowas chairman - has hampered any hope of a quick resolution to the Ivorian rebellion.
Political observers argue that a number of political heavyweights in West Africa have spent more time massaging dented egos and hurt pride and worrying about regional rivalry than concentrating on the worsening Ivorian crisis which threatens to destabilise the whole region.
And while regional squabbling has intensified, France appears to have stepped in to fill the breach and try to prevent all-out war, a throw-back to the days when Paris regularly intervened in Africa's conflicts.
Initially, France deployed 1,500 troops to Cote d'Ivoire to protect and evacuate its nationals and other foreigners from the battle zones. After a ceasefire agreement between Gbagbo's government and the MPCI in mid-October, French soldiers monitored the truce, keeping apart the warring factions until a fresh outbreak of fighting in the west last month, when French troops clashed with rebels in the town of Man.
West African peacekeepers were supposed to replace the French, to supervise the fragile ceasefire, but they are yet to arrive.
Now Paris has dramatically altered the mandate of the French forces in Cote d'Ivoire - from ceasefire monitors to peace enforcers, with orders to shoot anyone found violating the truce or committing human rights' abuses.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin told the Parisian La Croix newspaper Monday that France had "no hidden agenda" and that "if France wasn't there, a catastrophe would already have taken place". As it bolsters its military presence and equipment, Paris is also increasing diplomatic pressure on the region to find a negotiated settlement to the Ivorian crisis.
France has proposed hosting its own peace conference to bring together all the protagonists, Gbagbo's government and the rebels, as well as regional peace brokers.
But the MPCI, which still controls most of the north, warned Paris last week that beefing up its troops and changing brief was pure provocation. The resentful and infuriated northern rebels accused France of sending an 'occupying army' into its former colony, adding that this was tantamount to taking sides with Gbagbo, who the rebels insist must resign to make way for fresh elections. For his part, the Ivorian leader says the rebels must lay down their arms.
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There have been a number of anti-French demonstrations both in Abidjan, the southern coastal metropolis still under government control, and in the rebel-held stronghold of Bouake.
Inevitably, perhaps, analysts are questioning whether Africa can live up to its much-touted pledge to find African solutions to African problems and resolve its own conflicts. Struggling to salvage faltering peace efforts, in a region rocked by the turbulent upheaval in Cote d'Ivoire, does not cast West African leaders in an especially positive light.
Many people are asking whether the region is up to the task, or whether - reminiscent of the 70s and 80s and an era that Africans thought had been relegated to the history books - a former colonial master is now calling the shots and taking the important decisions for West Africa.
