South Africa ends mediation blaming rebels and opposition

Blaming rebels and opposition parties, South Africa said on Tuesday it was ending its mediation in the Cote d'Ivoire crisis and it was now the UN's call whether elections aimed at restoring peace to the West African nation could be held on schedule on 30 October. "We have fulfilled our obligations and now it is up to the African Union and the United Nations," Lesoana Makhanda, an Abidjan-based member of the mediation team, told IRIN. The African Union mandated South Africa to help end the standoff in Cote d'Ivoire after a flare-up in violence last November. The country has been split into a government-run south and a rebel-held north for the last three years, with some 10,000 UN and French peacekeepers in between. Fresh elections are at the heart of the international community's blueprint for peace, but progress towards that goal has been slow. With exactly two months to go before the planned ballot, a voter register has not been drawn up, the National Electoral Commission supposed to supervise the elections has not got off the ground and deadlines in the disarmament process have fallen by the wayside. Briefing reporters in Pretoria on Tuesday, South Africa's Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad blamed Cote d'Ivoire's political opposition and the rebels for the deadlock. "If they don't find a solution the situation will only deteriorate and we believe Cote d'Ivoire will explode into another cycle of violence and tragedy," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "There is no reason left for the... opposition forces not to enter the processes and fight the democratic elections to ensure that for the first time Cote d'Ivoire can have a government that can then deal with the problems the country is facing," he said. Last week the New Forces rebels said that elections would not be allowed go ahead on their territory, because conditions were not right for free and fair polls to be held. The rebels and the main Ivorian opposition parties are demanding that President Laurent Gbagbo step down so an interim government can organise the poll at a later date. ““(We) demand a transitional body be put in place," Alphonse Djedje-Mady, the spokesman for an alliance of four opposition parties, told a press conference on Monday. "It is evident that it will be materially and technically impossible to organise presidential elections in October 2005." There has been no immediate reaction from Gbagbo's camp, but the president has maintained since the beginning of the year that if elections are delayed he will stay on until a new head of state has been elected. Will polls go ahead as scheduled? The UN has been sticking fast to the 30 October timeframe, but over the weekend, Antonio Monteiro, the UN envoy charged with overseeing Cote d'Ivoire's polls, suggested that having the right conditions in place took priority over the date. “The election date is less important. What matters is to create an environment conducive to fair, free, and democratic elections that can be accepted by all the parties,” Monteiro told Radio France Internationale. Most diplomats in Cote d'Ivoire's de facto capital, Abidjan, have been saying privately for weeks that holding a credible poll at the end of October will be impossible.

Attention will now turn to the UN Security Council, which is set to receive what will be the final briefing from the South African mediation team on Wednesday. "It is implicit in the Security Council resolution that the Security Council will take action, sanctions, against anyone who is obstructing implementation of Linas-Marcoussis agreements," Deputy Foreign Minister Pahad said on Tuesday. Individual sanctions, such as travel bans and asset freezes, have already been approved by the Security Council who held off imposing them to give the South African mediation time. Diplomats say the sanctions could now be enforced not only against those blocking the peace process but also against those committing human rights abuses, inciting people to hate and breaking an arms embargo. "The threat of sanctions has been out there so long, and given the fact we are not going to meet the October elections deadline, I think it's time to apply them," one diplomat in Abidjan told IRIN on Tuesday. "I think the rebels have perhaps been more obvious in terms of their unwillingness to move forward." Rebel spokesman Sidiki Konate told IRIN that leader Guillaume Soro had sent a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan explaining why October polls weren't an option and shrugged off talk of sanctions. "The New Forces did not do anything against the peace process, we are partners of the peace process, so I don't know why we would be served sanctions," Konate said by telephone. Another Western diplomat cautioned that bringing sanctions into effect could make the warring factions even more intransigent. "It could make them feel like they were pushed into a corner by the international community," the diplomat said. "There could be serious repercussions and I am not sure if the UN is willing to take that risk."