Johannesburg — A weekend of intensive diplomacy in West Africa to try to keep the Cote dIvoire peace process alive seems to have ended inconclusive. All stakeholders were acutely aware of the approach of a rebel deadline, at midnight on Sunday, with the implicit threat by the Ivorian insurgents of a return to war if the French-brokered peace accord was not fully implemented.
As negotiations continued, news emerged of an apparent massacre in the western town of Man after hundreds of bodies were found in a mass grave.
Cote dIvoires new consensus prime minister, Seydou Diarra, flew to the Ghanaian capital Accra on Friday, for talks with President John Kufuor - the recently-elected chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) - and Ivorian rebel representatives.
Little concrete progress was made at the Accra meeting, though a senior Ghanaian official told allAfrica.com "Positions have moved.(President Laurent) Gbagbo has moved. They (the rebels) also have moved. We think they will show souplesse (flexibility) in the interests of Cote dIvoire.
"They all have confidence in Kufuor. They say he is a very good negotiator. Why? Because he listens" said the diplomat.
On Saturday, Diarra flew back to Abidjan, Cote dIvoires commercial capital, for further consultations with Gbagbo and others. It was unclear when Diarra might announce the national reconciliation government he has been trying to form for more than a week.
Meanwhile a rebel delegation, led by the secretary-general of the main Patriotic Movement of Cote dIvoire (MPCI), Guillaume Soro, flew out of Accra, Sunday en route to Nigeria, in what appears to be a whistle stop swing through West Africa by the rebels trying to garner diplomatic support from regional leaders. They were expected to meet President Olusegun Obasanjo in the capital, Abuja, before moving onto Mali and continuing to shuttle between other regional capitals.
The latest developments came hours before the expiry of a rebel deadline that they would "march south to Abidjan" and topple Gbagbos government, which narrowly escaped a coup detat in September last year.
In recent days, the rebels appeared to have softened their hardline stance on the immediate implementation of the Paris peace deal, agreed last month. But they have continued to insist they were promised the strategic defence and interior ministers and that both key posts were "not negotiable".
The suggestion that the rebels would secure sensitive cabinet positions in the new government triggered a wave of violent protest in Abidjan, after the Ivorian security forces, pro-government supporters in Abidjan, leading political parties and traditional leaders all rejected the inclusion of rebels in the new coalition leadership.
Gbagbo has indicated that he will have the final say in the selection of ministers, in consultation with Diarra. The presidents aides have already refused to accede to rebel demands, saying it was out of the question that the forces who "invaded" Cote dIvoire should now expect senior government jobs.
Little progress
The anti-French and anti-rebel demonstrations prompted West African leaders hastily to gather to try to unblock the impasse and avoid renewed civil war in Cote dIvoire. But there has been little movement, despite a flurry of regional diplomatic activity and a series of negotiations aimed at ending the bloody five month conflict.
With the looming rebel ultimatum, Sunday midnight, reports said truckloads of Ivorian government troops were seen moving north towards the frontlines to reinforce their positions.
Despite their threat to take up arms again, and attack Abidjan if Gbagbo did not respect in full the power-sharing peace deal signed in Paris, the rebels have been playing down their own deadline, indicating that fighting would not necessarily resume right away if the president did not comply.
A rebel spokesman told reporters Sunday that they were still waiting to hear from a committee - including the United Nations special envoy to Cote dIvoire, the Beninois Albert Tevoedjre - created to oversee the implementation of the peace agreement.
"Military action is not ruled out after the ultimatum, but we want to wait for the response from the follow-up committee before doing anything and also, we can not take a decision without consulting our soldiers," said Antoine Beugre of the MPCI.
Speaking in the rebel stronghold of Bouake in Central Cote dIvoire, Beugre said of the weekend talks in Ghana: "Nothing came from the meeting in Accra, except the fact that Diarra made clear that Gbagbo continued to refuse the ministerial posts."
It was not immediately clear what two other rebel factions, allied to the MPCI and dominant in the west of the country, would have to say about the passing of the Sunday night deadline.
Reports from behind rebel lines said jittery young fighters, disillusioned with the stop-start peace process, were itching to go back to war. They have openly criticised their leaders for preventing them from "sweeping past French truce monitors to take the offensive" and take the road to Abidjan, 350km (220 miles) south, reported Reuters.
French soldiers have been supervising ceasefire agreements between government and rebel troops from three factions, as well as trying to keep the rival sides apart. The rebels warned that they would take on the French military if necessary, in their much-touted intended strike on Abidjan.
France, the former colonial power in Cote dIvoire, has alternately been praised and denounced by both sides for its role since the rebellion began in September. Of an estimated 20,000 French nationals resident in Cote dIvoire, hundreds have left the country, with a marked increase occurring after the French became the targets of enraged pro-Gbagbo followers.
Several African leaders involved in trying to end the Ivorian civil war are expected in Paris next week for the Franco-African summit scheduled on Thursday and Friday. The conflict in Cote dIvoire - and a controversial invitation from President Jacques Chirac to Zimbabwes beleaguered and defiant leader Robert Mugabe to come to the French capital - are set to dominate the gathering, held every two years.
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On Sunday, rebel and government spokesmen accused one another of breaking the ceasefire in Cote dIvoire. But army spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Jules Yao Yao acknowledged that the attackers could have been a band of looters who he said fled towards the western border with Liberia, the scene of recent intense battles.
A four-year rebellion across the border in Liberia has again destabilised a nation wracked by a seven years of war in the 1990s, and spilled over the border into Cote dIvoire.
Reports say poorly disciplined freelance Liberian fighters, who loot, pillage and terrorise civilians, have joined the Ivorian rebels in the west, with Liberian mercenaries also fighting on the Ivorian government side.
Thousands of people are reported to have been killed in the Ivorian conflict. The UN says up to a million have been displaced.
The BBC reported Saturday that a suspected mass grave had been found in the western town of Man, containing what were thought to be hundreds of bodies. A correspondent said corpses were strewn across the local cemetery, adding that some of the bodies were wrapped in plastic sacks, some charred, while the positions of other corpses indicated summary executions.
