allAfrica.com

February 1, 2003
Posted to the web February 1, 2003

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
Johannesburg

As West African leaders gathered in Senegal, Friday, in a bid to rescue the
Cote d’Ivoire 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 d’Ivoire.

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 d’Ivoire 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 president’s 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 d’Ivoire (MPCI). Rebel officials say they were
promised these sensitive portfolios at a peace conference in France, with
Gbagbo’s 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 world’s
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 d’Ivoire, 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 d’Ivoire before the French diplomatic
initiative.

The new Ecowas chairman, and other heads of state of the regional
presidential contact group on Cote d’Ivoire, 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.

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 d’Ivoire.

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 d’Ivoire 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 d’Ivoire government and
rebel delegations.

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