Summit planned in Ghana to break deadlock in peace process

Cote d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo will meet representatives of civilian opposition parties and rebels occupying the north of the country on 29 July in the Ghanaian capital Accra to try to break four months of deadlock in the country's faltering peace process, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has announced. The meeting will also be attended by several West African leaders who have played a key role in trying to prevent Cote d'Ivoire from relapsing into civil war, Annan told journalists on Tuesday after emerging from talks with Gbagbo on the sidelines of the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa. The presidents of Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali and Gabon were all present at Annan's meeting with Gbagbo. “We have a clear road map to solving the difficulties,” Annan told journalists after the talks. A civil war erupted in Cote d'Ivoire in September 2002, a French-brokered peace agreement was signed in January 2003 and the fighting finally stopped three months later. However, the rebels have so far refused to disarm, until political reforms are enacted ahead of planned elections in October 2005. The peace process has been frozen since the rebels and the four main opposition parties represented in parliament walked out of a broad-based government of national reconciliation in March, leaving Gbagbo in sole charge of the administration. The president fired three ministers from the G7 opposition coalition in May and last week refused to reinstate them. Diplomats present at Tuesday's meeting in the Ethiopian capital said the discussions were often heated and Gbagbo at one point walked out. “There were some points where the discussion got to be very lively and frank,” one eyewitness of the exchanges told IRIN. “It is a fact that President Gbagbo felt uncomfortable at some point. He was out of the meeting for a while, but the meeting concluded with his agreement,” he added. Ghanaian President John Kufuor, who is the current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). will host the meeting between Gbagbo and his opponents at the end of this month. Last year, he presided over two previous rounds of discussions between the different parties in the Ivorian conflict to try and secure their agreement to implement the Linas-Marcoussi peace accord in full. AU Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare told African leaders in his report on the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire that issues like disarmament and demobilization must be addressed. “Obviously, efforts aimed at resolving the crisis and successfully implementing the Marcoussis agreement should be redoubled,” he said. Konare also called for a “clear and unambiguous signal” to be sent that the Ivorian parties need to demonstrate the political will to resolve the crisis.