Gbagbo left isolated after outburst

An alliance of opposition parties and rebels in Cote d'Ivoire has rejected President Laurent Gbagbo's tough decision to sack three ministers in the power-sharing government and replace them with loyalists of his own Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party. Now there are signs that Seydou Diarra, the independent Prime Minister who heads the broad-based government of national reconciliation, has sided firmly with the opposition bloc against the head of state by refusing to chair the cabinet until they are reinstated. A press aide of the soft-spoken prime minister told IRIN on Friday that Diarra was unlikely to resign over Gbagbo's sacking of the three ministers, which rides roughshod over the authority vested in his office by a January 2003 peace agreement. But few hours later, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that Diarra had written a letter to Gbagbo in which he disassociated himself from a presidential decree dismissing the three men. The decree, which was published on Wednesday, had cited Diarra as having recommended their replacement. AFP quoted Diarra as telling Gbagbo that he would not convene another cabinet meeting until a whole series of problems hindering the full implementation of the peace agreement had been definitively resolved. The text of the letter was published in full by the opposition newsaper Le Patriote on Saturday. The prime minister was purported to have told Gbagbo that his decision to sack the three ministers and stop the salary payments of 23 others who had boycotted the cabinet since the bloody repression of an opposition demonstration on 25 March had unleashed "a new even deeper crisis." "You will understand," Diarra was quoted as saying, "that I will not be in a position to convene the cabinet, nor be able to participate in the deliberations of the council of manisters, until there is a fundamental solution to all the existing problems." Diarra has personally maintained strict public silence throughout the crisis. But he appears to have found a way of siding squarely with the parliamentary opposition and the rebel forces occupying the north of Cote d'Ivoire in their tug of war with Gbagbo, without going to the point of tendering his resignation . On Thursday, the "G7" opposition alliance, which groups the four main opposition parties in parliament and the "New Forces" rebel movement, formally rejected Gbagbo's sacking of three ministers, describing the move as "null and void." Among those dismissed was Guillaume Soro, the rebel leader, who served as Communications Minister in the coalition cabinet. “The G7 calls on the [sacked] ministers to stay in their posts and to continue to work”, G7 spokesman Alphonse Djedje-Mady said on Thursday night. On Friday, Soro went further, demanding "the inconditional and immediate departure from power of Mr Laurent Gbagbo," accusing him of trying to deal "a fatal blow" to last year's French-brokered Marcoussis peace agreement. Delivering a keynote speech in the rebel capital Bouake, Soro, reaffirmed the rebels commitment to Marcoussis and eventual disarmament. He denied suggestions that the rebels planned to declare an independent state in the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire, which they have controlled since civil war broke out in September 2002. However, Soro did hint at a possible return to armed conflict. He defended the concept of a "war that is justified and just," citing the American War of Independence, the French revolution and the Allied fight against Nazi Germany in World War Two as examples. And he accused Gbagbo of preparing to infiltrate troops into the rebel-held area of northwestern Cote d'Ivoire from an un-named neighbouring country, which was obviously Guinea. Soro said that "in collusion with the head of state of a neighbouring country," Gbagbo was preparing to transit his troops through that country with the aim of "attacking our positions in the west and northwest, in particular the towns of Danane, Man Touba and Odienne." All these towns lie close to the Guinean frontier. Gbagbo visited the Guinean capital Conakry on Thursday and Friday to attend a regional mini-summit. Political sources told IRIN that Diarra, who has quietly endured many instances of Gbagbo over-riding his authority during his 14 months as prime minister, had drafted a letter of resignation on Tuesday night, hours after Gbagbo announced in a tough speech that he was stopping the pay of opposition ministers who were boycotting the cabinet and was planning to sack some of them. However, diplomatic sources said there had been heavy international pressure on the mild-mannered former civil servant to stay at his post to prevent the Marcoussis peace agreement collapsing completely. “I am not sure he is going to resign. The moment he goes, Marcoussis is dead”, a Nigerian diplomat told IRIN. The rebels have also made clear that they want Diarra to stay on. “He is the most important person, the key element, of the (Marcoussis) contract, but we’ve told him to hold on. We are with him”, rebel spokesman Sidiki Konate said. However, Diarra's press aide said the prime minister would only stick with the job if he were granted real authority as head of a power-sharing government, without Gbagbo invoking his extensive consitutional powers as president to over-rule him whenever he felt like it. “The guarantees that the prime minister has asked for are that he be able to concentrate on the technical role that he’s been given in the framework of Linas-Marcoussis”, he told IRIN. The Nigerian diplomat said Diarra was simply demanding the “powers to perform" the tasks assigned to him by the peace agreement. Marcoussis charges the government of national reconciliation with the implementation of political reforms, the supervision of disarmament and the organising fresh elections in October 2005. The latest crisis in the Ivorian peace process has drawn public statements of concern from the African Union and the United Nations. A spokesman for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Annan was "deeply concerned by the disturbing turn of events in Cote d'Ivoire." He said Annan had appealed to all parties in Cote d'Ivoire to "immediately resume political dialogue with a view to ensuring the effective functioning of the government of national reconciliation." One Abidjan-based lawyer and political analyst told IRIN that he thought Gbagbo’s latest declarations were designed to serve as a wake-up call to international community and were not necessarily aimed at derailling a peace agreement that he never liked in the first place. “The peace process has been dead for two months. Everybody is standing and watching. Neither France, nor the United Nations, much less the (UN-led) Monitoring Committee were putting any pressure on either side to move the process forward," he said. A UN diplomat also told IRIN that he believed Gbagbo’s recent bellicose outburst was a “cry for help.” But one African diplomat said it was time for the international community, which has deployed several thousand peacekeeping troops in Cote d'Ivoire, to get tough with the president. “He [Gbagbo] needs to know that the international community always wins,” the diplomat said.