Obasanjo Undertakes Last Minutes Peace Deals in Cote d” Ivoire

Politics
Cote d” Ivoire
January 10, 2011
By Williams Ekanem




African statesman and for Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo last weekend mediated in the political empasse in Cote d’ Ivoire but left the country with very little or no success. After series of entreaties by various African leaders including for Ghana and South African presidents with Gbagbo still adamant, reports say Obasanjo made a surprise visit to the troubled country holding meetings with the two political leaders.

Gbagbo has refused to step down even though results issued by the electoral commission and certified by the United Nations (UN) showed he lost to opposition leader, Alassane Ouattara, by a near nine-point margin.
Four other African leaders were in Cote d’Ivoire at the start of last week to attempt to mediate, but came back empty-handed. Obasanjo is said to have shuttled between the two men, seeing each once on Saturday night following his arrival, and twice on Sunday. The purpose of the visit was to exhaust the diplomatic options before a military intervention is considered.

Obasanjo made a surprise visit on Saturday night on a mission sanctioned by Nigeria, part of a flurry of initiatives aimed at persuading Gbagbo to give up power peacefully. “My own exploration remains positive and to that extent ... I am optimistic,” Obasanjo told journalists at a hotel in Abidjan late Sunday night.
He spent Sunday in talks with Gbagbo and Ouattara, who remains holed up in the lagoon-side Golf Hotel under guard of UN peacekeepers and blockaded by pro-Gbagbo military.

ECOWAS, headed by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, has threatened to remove Gbagbo by force if he refuses to go quietly. But any such military effort would be logistically daunting, and Gbagbo has dismissed such threats as interference in Cote d’Ivoire’s sovereign affairs. Asked whether he still thought military intervention was the solution, Obasanjo replied: “When you have a problem you must consider all possible solutions.” “We know that an election has taken place. The whole world knows the result of the election. My exploration is to see how and where we go from here,” he said. In a sign that cracks were appearing in ECOWAS’s tough stance, Ghana’s President John Atta Mills announced on Friday that he would not take sides in the conflict and he did not believe a military action would solve anything.

“We believe in quiet diplomacy, so I have expressed reservations about the success of the intended military option. There are more than one million Ghanaians in Cote d’Ivoire. I don’t want to be saddled with problems we can’t solve,” Mills said.
The UN says at least 210 people have been killed in violence since the election, including 14 in inter-ethnic violence in the western town of Duekoue in recent days.
While many Ivorians are resigned to the deadlock dragging on, some are impatient for a quick end to the impasse and note that dialogue has already been tried and that the end-result was the staging of the election itself. "We're so sick of this," said tailor Estelle Subia. "Whatever they need to do to resolve it, they had better do it fast." Few Ivorians have the stomach for military intervention to oust Laurent Gbagbo after a disputed election, and many are resigned to a political deadlock which they fear could last months or even years.

Gbagbo is locked in a power struggle with rival Alassane Ouattara, internationally proclaimed as the winner of a November 28 presidential election that the incumbent refuses to concede. Leaders of West Africa's region ECOWAS bloc have threatened Gbagbo with force but he maintains a grip both on the country's army and on funds from the cocoa sector, the world's largest.