Can Accra 3 end the "no war no peace" paralysis?

Under the watchful eye of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and other African leaders, Cote d'Ivoire's president, opposition and rebels will sit down on Thursday in the Ghanaian capital Accra to try to break a political deadlock and end what Ivorians call "no war, no peace". But ahead of the talks, billed by President Laurent Gbagbo as "the last meeting", the rival factions are sticking to their guns. Gbagbo's ruling party says the starting point is for rebels to disarm and the rebels are calling for parliament to first pass political reforms. Analysts, diplomats and residents alike are sceptical about success in Accra, the third Ivorian summit in the city since the crisis erupted almost two years ago, splitting the world's top cocoa producer into a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north. “I am not expecting great things from Accra 3,” said a member of the Network of Ivorian Intellectuals for Peace, Democracy and Governance, characterising the summit as another “bickering session” between Gbagbo and the G7 alliance of opposition parties and rebels. A UN military officer in Abidjan was equally doubtful. "I don’t see what can come out of Accra unless it is an imposed decision. But a forced decision will be hard to implement on the ground,” he told IRIN. A spokesman for Ghana's Foreign Affairs Ministry said on Tuesday that Gbagbo, New Forces rebel leader Guillaume Soro and Prime Minister Seydou Diarra were all confirmed for the talks as well as 12 other African leaders including South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigerian President and current chairman of the African Union, Olusegun Obasanjo. But up in northern Cote d'Ivoire, a hotel worker in the town of Korhogo didn't think there would be anything new to say around the negotiating table. “They tell them [African presidents] to go here, they go. They tell them to go there, they go. But they’re not going to spend their lives dealing with Cote d’Ivoire,” he said. Indeed Cote d'Ivoire could be overshadowed by a crisis in full swing in Darfur, western Sudan. A spokeswoman for the Nigerian presidency said on Monday that Sudan was now on the Accra agenda too. UN officials call Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis and the U.S. Congress believes genocide is being waged there. Fighting between two rebel groups and the Janjawid militia allied to the government has killed thousands of mainly black Africans and displaced at least 1.2 million more. Two years of crisis Cote d'Ivoire's crisis started nearly two years ago, with a rebellion against Gbagbo in September 2002. Less than two weeks later, the first regional summit was called in Accra and a mediation team set up to negotiate with the rebels. But four months of civil war followed until January, when a French-brokered peace deal, the Linas-Marcoussis Accord, was signed. In March 2003, Accra played host to a second summit, which put the finishing touches to a government of national reconciliation. But the deal soon began to falter, freezing completely in March this year when the G7 walked out of the government in protest at the deaths of at least 120 of their supporters trying to stage a banned peace demonstration. A UN report blamed security forces and pro-Gbagbo militias for the deaths. Gbagbo subsequently sacked three opposition ministers in May, including communication minister and rebel leader Soro. The G7 has said the three must be reinstated or the peace deal ceases to exist, but Gbagbo has refused, asking for new nominees and arguing that the peace deal does not tie ministerial posts to certain individuals. “We expect Accra to solve all the problems linked to the application of Linas-Marcoussis. Since we know where the obstacles are coming from, there is nothing for us to really give," Amadou Kone, a senior aide to Soro told IRIN from the rebel headquarters in Bouake. Gbagbo's ruling Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) is approaching the summit with an equally fixed but opposing position. “Accra must resolve issues concerning a disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, a return of public administration and preparations for elections in 2005,” the party's president and one-time prime minister Pascal Affi N’guessan told IRIN. Asked what concessions Gbagbo might make at Accra, he replied: “I don’t know if he has anything else to concede.” When Annan announced the summit three weeks ago, he urged Gbagbo to continue the dialogue with the opposition, talk with the presidents of Mali and Burkina Faso, revive bilateral cooperation commissions between the countries, and ensure that parliamentarians approve constitutional reforms. Gbagbo was attending a mini-summit with his Malian and Burkinabe counterparts in Bamako on Tuesday, a Malian presidential press officer said. But the Cote d'Ivoire opposition and Gbagbo have not met and parliamentary reforms dealing with land ownership, nationality and eligibility for the presidency have stalled. Few are expecting a key breakthrough at Accra 3. Indeed the International Crisis Group said earlier this month that government figures, rebels, businessmen and members of the security forces were too busy cashing in on the situation to worry about peace. "Today's political actors have found that war serves as an excellent means of enrichment, and they may be ill-served by the restoration of peace and security," the Brussels-based think-tank said in its 'No Peace in Sight' report. "Until the financial motivation of maintaining the impasse is addressed, there is little hope that the situation in Cote d'Ivoire will change, or even that elections will take place in October 2005."