POLITICS- CoTE D’IVOIRE: Peace Eludes Despite Pact Signed in France

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jan 27 2003 (IPS) - The Côte d’Ivoire peace accord reached during the weekend near Paris has brought about the practical end of the elected government of president Laurent Gbagbo, to the benefit of the opposition and the rebel forces that launched the civil war on Sept 19 last year.

The agreement, signed by government and rebels in a conference held in Marcoussis, in the outskirts of Paris, might also lead to the installation of a new French protectorate in the Côte d’Ivoire to avoid an internationalisation of the conflict, analysts said.

During the weekend, the UN secretary general Kofi Annan, an African coalition of 12 states, including South Africa, Mali, Ghana, Gabon and Cameroon, and France, ratified the agreement in Paris, and announced that international aid should now flow into the Côte d’Ivoire to finance reconstruction.

The peace pact should launch an international campaign of economic aid for the Côte d’Ivoire, whose economy has been severely damaged by the civil war.

The president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, who participated in the signing ceremony, announced a first package of aid, worth of 400 million dollars.

However, the agreement in Marcoussis was accompanied by violent demonstrations against France in the Côte d’Ivoire.

Describing the accord a humiliation for Laurent Gbagbo, thousands of protesters loyal to the government chanted slogans against France and in favour of the United States, and sacked French institutions and residences in the Atlantic port of Abidjan, the country’s economic capital, and in other cities.

The French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin accused "extremists linked to the government" of being responsible of the chaos.

The anti French protests underline the ambiguous position assumed by France in the conflict: While defending militarily the government of Laurent Gbagbo with some 2,600 troops, France pushed through an agreement that virtually ends his government.

The peace agreement foresees the immediate creation of a national reconciliation government, which will be led by Seydou Diarra, and gives the rebel forces the ministries of defence and of the interior.

Diarra, a Moslem from the North of the Côte d’Ivoire, is considered as "a wise man", although he served between Dec 1999 and Oct 2000 as prime minister under the short dictatorship of Colonel Robert Guei.

In this new power structure, Gbagbo will remain president, but deprived of most authority. Gbagbo’s party, the Front populaire ivoirien (FPI), will only have two ministries – of economy and of energy.

This imbalance in the distribution of power within the new government to the disadvantage of Gbagbo corresponds to the outcome of the civil war, during which only the French military intervention hindered the rebels to defeat the official army.

Gbagbo, who was in Paris during the weekend to sign the agreement, admitted that his army had not won the war. "I have to accept the consequences," Gbagbo said.

The agreement eliminates the notion of "ivoirité", established in the country’s constitution, and which defines the citizenship according to ethnical criteria.

This notion of "ivoirité" led in Oct 2000 to the ban on 15 candidates for the presidency to run in the general elections, and was one of the reasons argued by rebels to justify the civil war.

Laurent Gbagbo won the elections, in which only 37 percent of the registered voters cast their vote. Former dictator Robert Guei lost.

Several analysts and Ivoirian political personalities see the agreement of Paris as a last, though an uncertain, chance for peace in Côte d’Ivoire.

Alassane Dramane Ouattara, former prime minister, opposition leader, and one of the candidates excluded from the elections in 2000, who took part in the peace conference, admitted that the agreement awarded a prize to the rebels, against the nominal rule of law.

"We have discussed this issue in Marcoussis," Outtara said. "The rebel representatives told us of their grievances, why they took on the weapons, and we realized that they had good reasons."

Therefore, Outtara added, "We decided to agree on two principles: The power can only be reached through elections and not by the force of weapons. However, there is also the other criterion, of good governance. The exercise of power must be democratic, not arbitrary, to avoid frustrations that inevitably lead to conflicts and to armed opposition."

Outtara, who at the very beginning of the civil war on Sept 19 escaped an assassination attempt by death squads linked to the government, and lives in exile in France since last November, said he wouldn’t be going back to the Côte d’Ivoire. "I don’t even think of it," he said.

For Jean-Francois Bayart, a researcher at the Centre for International Studies in Paris, and expert on Western Africa, the agreement is a fragile one.

According to Bayart, the peace agreement depends on the behaviour of president Laurent Gbagbo. "If he resigns now, the risk of a coup d’état is real. The possibility of a return to the civil war cannot be excluded."

The researcher underlined that to avoid such a development or the internationalisation of the conflict, France may be forced to create a "new protectorate".

"French military forces have so far protected foreign citizens living in the main cities of the country, and stopped the advance of rebels," Bayart said. "But now their main objective must be to restore peace and the rule of law, something that neither the African countries nor other foreign forces are ready or in a position to fulfil. In fact, this is a new protectorate, that may last several years," Bayart added.