Johannesburg — As West African leaders gathered in Senegal, Friday, in a bid to rescue the Cote dIvoire peace accord and find urgent resolutions to the escalating crisis, thousands of youths invaded the airport runway in the main city, Abidjan. They vowed to prevent the prime minister-elect from flying in and tried to stop Western foreigners from fleeing.
Television images of Felix Houphouet Boigny international airport in Abidjan, showed youths harassing foreigners heading to the departure terminal, as they prepared to leave a troubled Cote dIvoire.
There were days of anti-French riots earlier in the week in protest at a peace deal brokered by the former colonial power.
The agreement immediately hit a hurdle when it was challenged this week by the Cote dIvoire army, government supporters, political parties and traditional leaders. They complain that Paris used strong-arm tactics to impose a one-sided peace package on President Laurent Gbagbo that favoured the rebels who control half the country.
The new deal would drastically reduce the presidents powers, handing them to a new consensus prime minister, named as Seydou Diarra.
But the main contentious issue has been the apparent , yet unconfirmed, designation of the defence and interior ministries to the main rebel Patriotic Movement of Cote dIvoire (MPCI). Rebel officials say they were promised these sensitive portfolios at a peace conference in France, with Gbagbos approval.
But the Ivorian security forces have refused to share power with their adversaries on the battlefield, as the agreement dictates, saying that such a move would be a total "humiliation". The military has also refused to be cantoned or returned to barracks, saying its troops must not be treated in the same way as "rebel invaders".
Diarra was scheduled to fly back to Abidjan, Friday, but had to delay his return after the protestors invaded and besieged the international airport. The youths warned Diarra, a Muslim northerner and respected former premier, not to come home: "Seydou Diarrhea (sic), if you are clever, resign. Otherwise!" Reuters reported one threatening placard as saying.
West African officials, meeting at a regional summit in Senegal, told Reuters: "There have to be guarantees before Seydou Diarra will go to Abidjan."
French troops and Ivorian security forces intervened to protect the foreigners and stop the demonstrators who earlier pelted the French military with stones. One French soldier was reported injured in the stand-off which lasted several hours, trapping families in the airport during an agonising wait before they could fly out.
Hundreds of French people - particularly women and children - lined up in long queues, desperate to get out of the country which, as the worlds number one cocoa-producer, was once a regional bastion of stability and prosperity in West Africa.
Most of the French nationals were able to fly out, but some failed to get on the flights and will have to return to the airport Saturday, possibly again running the gauntlet of the angry, pro-government protestors.
Friday the stone-throwing mob attempted to storm planes on the tarmac, while other demonstrators taunted and insulted terrorized French families, slapping and spitting at them all the way from the car park to the terminal, a hundred metres away.
West African summit
While another day of disturbances unfolded in Cote dIvoire, further west, in Senegal, regional leaders gathered to try to find some urgent solutions to the conflict, which began with a failed coup launched by the rebels on September 19, 2002.
Ghanaian president John Agyekum Kufuor, was elected to succeed the Senegalese leader, Abdoulaye Wade, as chairman of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas). The regional organisation tried and failed to broker peace in Cote dIvoire before the French diplomatic initiative.
The new Ecowas chairman, and other heads of state of the regional presidential contact group on Cote dIvoire, are scheduled to meet Gbagbo in Abidjan, Saturday. West African diplomats will have to try to convince him to compromise, after reportedly putting pressure on the rebels in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to drop their demands to control both the defence and interior portfolios.
The rebels have indicated that they are not prepared to renegotiate the deal, reached after a marathon nine days of talks in France.
When he returned to Abidjan on Sunday, Gbagbo promised to address the nation about his views on the accord. All week Ivorians have been anxiously waiting to hear from their leader. Several planned television appearances by Gbagbo were cancelled or postponed while the president continued his consultations.
Now, observers say they expect him to let Ivorians know what he is thinking once the regional leaders have met Gbagbo in Abidjan and some conclusions are reached about the fragility of the shaky Paris accord and whether it can work.
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West African heads of state have a tough job ahead of them, trying to unravel a complicated conflict which has manifested itself in violence and killings, as well as political, ethnic and religious tension in a now geographically divided Cote dIvoire.
Kufuor inherits a poison chalice. With increasing doubt about making the French-mediated peace plan work on the ground, the Ghanaian leader also faces the challenge of trying to unite the Ecowas leadership.
The past few months have been characterised by embarrassing public squabbling between the outgoing Ecowas chairman, Wade, and the Togolese president, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who was named as the chief coordinator of the West African Cote dIvoire mediation efforts.
Contradictory declarations and crossed wires between the two have further confused the situation and hampered progress in West African-brokered peace talks in the Togolese capital, Lome, which all but broke down before the French stepped in.
Analysts say that, despite the best efforts of Ecowas senior staff to keep the regional negotiations on track, the talks were hobbled almost as much by internal bickering between the regional leaders - leading to indecision and inaction - as by the differences between the Cote dIvoire government and rebel delegations.
