Johannesburg — The scene is set for the Cote dIvoire peace talks to relocate to the French capital, Wednesday, after weeks of deadlocked negotiations in Togo. Delegations representing Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, three separate rebel factions and political parties have all made their way to the talks , which it is hoped will lead to a negotiated settlement.
France, the former colonial power, stepped in to kick-start West African-brokered negotiations after they stalled over key differences between the Ivorian government and the rebel Patriotic Front of Cote dIvoire (MPCI) which controls the north of the country.
The government and the MPCI rebels signed a truce in October. But Paris' diplomatic efforts received a boost, Monday, when the two newer rebel factions operating in the west of Cote dIvoire signed a separate ceasefire.
The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin had embarked on whistle-stop diplomatic peace missions to West Africa in recent weeks to persuade the warring parties to talk.
Villepin told parliament in Paris that they faced a tremendous challenge. "Our objectives are clear even if they are ambitious. Peace, reconciliation and the reconstruction of Cote d'Ivoire." He warned that "we must succeed for the sake of the region, for all its countries are suffering from the instability of Cote d'Ivoire."
Villepin reminded everyone that trouble in the world's top cocoa producer, the region's second largest economy - and now a geographically- and ethnically-divided nation - spelled potential disaster for West Africa.
France has invited Gbagbo and other African leaders to meet in Paris at the end of the month after the talks between the rebels and the government, so that the Ivorian president can endorse any deal that is agreed.
Gbagbo has sent his prime minister, Pascal Affi Nguessan, to the meetings in France and told French radio, Monday, that he saw the talks as "a sign that we are going towards an end of the hostilities."
The French-brokered talks are scheduled to last 10 days. The delegates are to start meeting behind closed doors, Wednesday, at the French national rugby centre in Linas-Marcoussis, 35km (20 miles) southeast of Paris.
Nguessan told reporters in Paris: "We are ready for a dialogue and complete openness. But we cannot accept a dialogue that is conducted with weapons. Each and every one must put down their weapons".
The Ivorian prime minister said it was up to the rebels to propose a way out of the crisis. "It is them who must say why we are here and how to get out of it." Nguessan also repeated that the government in Abidjan would not yield to the key rebel demand that Gbagbo resign. "Ivorians are not ready to give (the rebels) power, because they took up arms. We are ready to make a contribution and to reaffirm a number of our principles... We are ready to talk, but the problem does not lie with us," he said.
The Ivorian government has insisted at negotiations so far that the rebels must lay down their weapons. Gbagbo has accused them of being power-hungry and supported by hostile neighbouring states and mysterious financial backers.
Gbagbo on Monday repeated his earlier pledge to offer the rebels amnesty. Analysts say Paris has put pressure on the Ivorian leader to form an inclusive government of national unity to include representatives from all the major political forces in Cote d'Ivoire. They say a strong coalition cabinet would lay a firm foundation for necessary reforms, in preparation for scheduled elections in 2005.
The Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party of the main opposition leader, Alassane Dramane Ouattara, is likely to participate in the negotiations in France. Reports said Ouattara, a former prime minister and currently in exile in France may himself attend.
Ouattara has been a focus of hostility and resentment among Ivorians who question his loyalty to their country. Queries about his nationality disqualified Ouattara from standing in the contested presidential election in October 2000, which brought Gbagbo to power. His exclusion from the poll sparked violent reprisals and clashes between Ouattara's and Gbagbo's followers which left hundreds of people dead.
Ouattara has since remained a thorn in the side of the Abidjan authorities, although the RDR party was represented in Gbagbo's national unity government, until his representatives pulled out late last year in protest at the president's handling of the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire.
Most Ivorian government supporters accuse Ouattara, a Muslim northerner, of being in league with the northern-based MPCI rebels, though he has repeated there has been neither connivance nor even a direct link between him and the insurgents. However both Ouattara and the rebels have expressed similar misgivings, that Cote d'Ivoire under Gbagbo is a country that discriminates against a section of the population.
Paris is apparently not suggesting that the Ivorian president should resign. But, ahead of the Paris negotiations, the rebel fighters were sticking to their demand that Gbagbo must step down, though their talk was otherwise conciliatory.
MPCI rebel spokesman, Guillaume Soro - on a stopover in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, en route to Paris aboard a French military cargo plane with other rebel leaders - implied that they were prepared to make some concessions. "No sacrifice is too great to achieve peace," he said, adding that the rebels were ready to do "everything possible to succeed through dialogue, through a political solution, to silence the cannons, to allow Ivorians to live together... We are not extremists," said Soro.
Felix Doh, who has emerged as the leader of the Ivorian Popular Movement for the Far West (MPIGO) - one of the factions that signed a ceasefire agreement on Monday - was also upbeat. "We know we are going to get good results in Paris, so that our country will know lasting peace."
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But Doe, whose rebel group has been accused of using lawless ex-fighters from the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars, was not in a mood for compromise on a central issue. "Our first demand is the immediate re-run of presidential and parliamentary elections."
But Gbagbo does not seem prepared to compromise on that issue. "The constitution does not allow early elections. Let them (the rebels) wait until 2005," he said, referring to the date of the next scheduled polls in Cote d'Ivoire.
The rebels have accused Gbagbo, elected in a disputed presidential poll in 2000, of sidelining non-southerners and certain parts of the country, especially the north. They say Gbagbo and his supporters have sponsored the concept of ivoirite (true Ivorian identity) and encouraged hatred among different tribes and Cote d'Ivoire's huge immigrant community.
The United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan - himself from neighbouring Ghana - said, Tuesday, that Cote d'Ivoire was "now caught in the downward spiral of conflict". Hundreds of people have been killed and the UN reports that tens of thousands of people have been driven from their homes by the four-month rebellion.
In another development, Tuesday, on the eve of the Paris peace talks and as rebel leaders flew out of Senegal heading for France, the first major deployment of a regional army set sail from Senegal for Cote d'Ivoire, to join the fledgling West African peacekeeping mission there.
