Johannesburg — Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo named a new prime minister, Saturday, agreeing in principle to share power, in line with a peace plan drawn up at all-party negotiations sponsored by France aimed at ending four months of civil war.
Seydou Diarra, 69, a grey-haired, bespectacled former career diplomat and businessman, who dabbled in cocoa was, from 1999 to 2000, prime minister under Cote dIvoires only military government since independence from France. Diarra will lead a new government of national unity and reconciliation in Cote dIvoire.
Gbagbo said he had requested Diarra, a Muslim northerner, to nominate a government and pledged that he would address the nation once he had approved Diarras cabinet selection.
"He is the man of the moment, the man who can reassure all the camps, the one they all respect,"said Honorat de Yedagne, head of the pro-government daily <i>Fraternite Matin</i> newspaper, of his long time friend.
Reuters quoted a western diplomat saying "Of course Seydou Diarra is the ideal man to be prime minister now," adding "My only worry would be over his age and his physical capacity to keep up the job until 2005," the date of the next scheduled presidential election in Cote dIvoire.
But Diarras appointment and developments in Paris did not appear to receive universal popular support back home in parts of Cote dIvoire. Angry mobs took to the streets of the main city, Abidjan, Saturday to protest against what they said was undue pressure on Gbagbo, by the former colonial power, to accept the terms of the draft agreement.
The protestors chanted anti-French slogans and took their demonstration to the French military base in the city, denouncing the accord which was drawn up by the Ivorian government, rebel and political party representatives after a marathon nine-day conference outside Paris.
Many people in Abidjan, which has remained under government control since the failed coup on September 19, are furious that the president agreed to peace talks with the rebels who launched the uprising and now control the north and parts of western Cote dIvoire.
Youths roaming the city with sticks and stones threatened to target French people. Some burnt a French flag and there were reports that a French secondary school in Abidjan had been attacked.
Abidjan, Cote dIvoires southern metropolis and commercial capital, remains under curfew.
In central, rebel-held territory, there was a smaller protest by people in the city of Bouake, demonstrating their disappointment at the Paris deal. "We do not want Gbagbo at all," shouted about a hundred rebel supporters, echoing past demands by the insurgents that Gbagbo stand down.
The protests are a sign that not everyone is ready for peace in Cote dIvoire and the agreement worked out in Paris will be tough to implement and enforce. One condition is that the rebels must disarm. Another calls for an amnesty for rebel soldiers, the reorganisation of the Ivorian armed forces and an international human rights commission to examine alleged abuses. But it is difficult to assess whether the accord will survive once the Ivorians return home to put it into practice.
Gbagbos decision to accept the key elements of what is being called the Marcoussis Accord - named after the national French rugby centre in Linas Marcoussis where the negotiations took place - came after a two-hour meeting with French president Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General on Saturday.
Annan hopeful
As a French-sponsored summit African leaders summit opened, Annan said he hoped that "the spirit of openness and compromise which made it possible to achieve this accord will prevail and that decisions which have been taken will be implemented in good faith."
He warned: "It is, of course, for the men and women of Cote dIvoire to repudiate this dark page of their history... but we can and must help them to do so." The UN chief urged the world community to honour its pledges to assist Cote dIvoire to return to early peace. "Let us not betray the hopes of the Ivorian people," he said in a statement.
Summit sources revealed Gbagbo needed considerable arm-twisting by the French, Annan and other African leaders meeting at a Paris summit. Observers say Chirac twice had to take Gbagbo aside for private talks to ensure that he was fully committed to implementing the peace package.
After the peace deal was proposed on Friday, the Ivorian leader said little about whether he was indeed prepared to accept and endorse it. He may have needed time to digest the fact that his own powers would be sharply reduced, obliging him to share authority with the new prime minister and an inclusive consensus cabinet.
Gbagbos accession to power, in a disputed 2000 presidential poll, has been consistently contested by the rebels, who say he was not legitimately elected and does not represent the majority of Ivorians.
But by naming Diarra, Gbagbo may have appeased some of his outspoken critics - including the rebels who tried and failed to unseat him by taking up arms.
"Diarra will form a national unity government whose prime aims will be to end the war in Cote dIvoire and return the country to prosperity," said Gbagbo at a news conference on Saturday, his first since he arrived in Paris on Thursday.
Under the terms of the Marcoussis Accord and by serving as prime minister during the transition, Diarra would be excluded from standing as president in the next scheduled elections in 2005.
Monumental task
Cote dIvoires new prime minister faces a monumental task. He has to steer the country out of its most turbulent period and try to reunite Ivorians in a fractured and demoralised country. Diarra won respect as a national figure when he led the much-vaunted Reconciliation Forum set up by Gbagbo to try to ease explosive ethnic, social, religious and political tensions.
But the non-binding recommendations of the Forum - many of which mirror the current peace accord - were not fully applied. Within months, the rebels launched their revolt which rocked Cote dIvoire and the whole of West Africa, raising the spectre of a civil war in an increasingly unstable region.
Reuters reports that Diarra will appoint ministers from across the political spectrum, to a power-sharing government - including the rebels. Two will come from Gbagbos Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party, two from within rebel ranks, another couple from the former governing Cote dIvoire Democratic Party (PDCI) and another two from the Rally of the Republicans (RDR). The RDR is the leading opposition party headed by Gbagbos main political adversary, and former prime minister, Alassane Dramane Ouattara, who is in exile in France.
Ouattara, like Diarra, is a Muslim northerner. Ouattara was barred from standing in the 2000 presidential election, because of questions over his nationality. He, and the rebels, have called for a fresh and transparent poll.
But the rebels dropped their demand that Gbagbo must resign. Guillaume Soro, the secretary-general the main rebel Patriotic Movement of Cote dIvoire (MPCI), which controls the north, said of the peace agreement "We are totally satisfied. We signed in full knowledge of what we were doing. Now we want peace back for good."
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There have also been simmering tensions between Gbagbo and some of his neighbours who were obliquely accused by Abidjan of involvement in the rebellion. President Blaise Compaore of Burkina Faso - who also attended the Paris summit - said this week he felt Gbagbo should go. Compaore likened Gbagbo to the former and now disgraced Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, saying he expected the Ivorian leader to face an international war crimes tribunal, "like Milosevic".
Compaore said his country should go to international court over allegations of killings and abuses of immigrants living in Cote dIvoire, most of them from across the border in Burkina.
But Chirac hailed Gbagbos choice of Diarra, saying he had received the support of all parties. But, warned the French president, much remained to be done, not least, "to ensure that everyone respects the rules of the game they have signed up to."
France has deployed 2,500 troops to Cote dIvoire and is currently monitoring the shaky ceasefire lines and trying to keep loyalist and rebel forces apart. A West African peacekeeping contingent is supposed to work alongside the French soldiers, but has only just begun, slowly, to send troops to Cote dIvoire.
The American State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, urged all sides to "implement this agreement in good faith." Boucher said:"We are very pleased to see that the Ivorian parties signed a peace agreement in Paris and that the balance of peacekeeping forces from the Economic Community of West African States are going to be deployed within next week."
