Parleying in Paris
The Ivorian government and two armed opposition groups have clinched a cease-fire deal in Togo just two days ahead of Ivorian peace talks in Paris, writes Gamal Nkrumah
France has done its bit for the moment, and so has Togo's President Gnassingbe Eyadema. On Monday, the Togolese authorities announced that the Ivory Coast government and armed opposition groups signed a cease-fire agreement just two days ahead of wider roundtable peace talks in Paris.
French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin's two-day trip to Ivory Coast last week paved the way for Wednesday's Paris peace talks between the Ivorian government and armed opposition groups.
The Togolese president and Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the secretary-general of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), officiated over the signing of the cease-fire ceremony in the Togolese capital, Lome. Hopes for peace in the war-torn Ivory Coast have soared.
In a flurry of diplomatic activity, French and West African leaders have worked out different, albeit highly coordinated plans, for peace in the Ivory Coast where a vicious and disruptive civil war has been raging since September. The war has impacted Ivory Coast's poorer and landlocked neighbours to the north, themselves accused of supporting certain armed opposition groups like the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement (MPCI) -- the main armed opposition group based in the northern, predominantly Muslim half of the country. The Ivorian government and the MPCI signed a truce on 17 October, but tensions are running high because armed clashes and breeches of the truce are commonplace.
Attempts by the African Union and the 16- nation ECOWAS seem finally to have borne fruit. Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema, a former military ruler and one of Africa's longest serving heads of state, managed to get the leaders of the two main armed Ivorian opposition groups based in the southwestern part of the country -- the Ivorian Popular Movement of the Great West (MPIGO) and Justice and Peace Movement (MJP).
Eyadema's efforts were acclaimed by both the French and his West African peers. Nevertheless, his own record in Togo has been severely criticised by the country's Western aid donors. Eyadema, who now officially heads a team of West African mediators in the Ivorian conflict, is supposed to voluntarily relinquish power this year. Presumably he wants to leave behind the legacy of an elderly African peace-making statesman. As the Togolese Constitution now stands, the tenure of office of Eyadema -- who has ruled Togo for the past 36 years -- runs out in 2003. The Togolese opposition is in disarray and if change is to come it is in all probability likely to be from within the regime itself. Eyadema dismissed his Prime Minister Gabriel Messan Agbeyome this year after Agbeyome criticised the president in a highly publicised incident.
Still, even though Western donor nations have cold shouldered Eyadema's Togo, they applaud his peacemaking efforts in Ivory Coast. Peace in Ivory Coast must come at any cost, the pundits decree.
It is in this context that much hope is pinned on the Ivorian peace talks in the Togolese capital. France realises that it cannot act alone in Ivory Coast without highly coordinated cooperation from within West Africa. France desperately needs to stress the credibility of its peacemaking efforts in resolving the Ivorian crisis with a regional West African stamp of approval. As such it must deal with Eyadema and his ilk.
The Ivorian government, for its part, is rather embarrassed to be talking with what it regards as "the rebels". But Gbagbo's government is under intense pressure to compromise with the armed opposition groups. All concerned want to kick start what was once the economic powerhouse of entire Francophone West Africa. The Ivorian economy, awash with oil and a host of cash crops, including cocoa, coffee, cotton, rubber and palm oil, holds much promise.
Two armed opposition leaders from the western part of the country, Gaspard Deli and Felix Doh, have indicated that their organisations will sign a cease-fire truce with the government. The dissident groups, however, want the government to grant them a general amnesty as a condition for signing the truce. The Ivorian government grudgingly accepted. "I think that [granting the rebels amnesty] will be unjust, but it will be necessary to accept this injustice if we want to achieve peace," Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo told reporters in Abidjan. The Ivorian government, however, refused opposition demands for holding early presidential and parliamentary elections.
Whose star is shining and whose is waning? It is difficult to tell. It is hard to see Gbagbo's government lasting for very much longer in spite of the popular support he still enjoys in much of the southern part of Ivory Coast, including the country's chief port and commercial capital Abidjan. The armed Ivorian opposition groups, however, will bask in the spotlight afforded them by the seal of regional and international approval and recognition as a force to be reckoned with.
The big fear is that more scores still need to be settled. The French grand plan for Ivory Coast must eventually include the democratisation of the country. With 2,500 troops stationed in its former colony and 20,000 resident French nationals, much is at stake for the French.
France has had its fingers badly burned in Africa during the course of the past decade. After all, the French were implicated in aiding, abetting and protecting the perpetrators of the 1984 genocide of ethnic Tutsi in Rwanda. In Ivory Coast, the French must tread very carefully.
