COTE D'IVOIRE: PEACE TRAIN SLOWS TO A CRAWL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ABIDJAN 000926

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

KINSHASA PASS TO BRAZZAVILLE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/17/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL KPKO ASEC IV
SUBJECT: COTE D'IVOIRE: PEACE TRAIN SLOWS TO A CRAWL

REF: A. ABIDJAN 903


B. ABIDJAN 839

C. ABIDJAN 854

D. ABIDJAN 804

E. ABIDJAN 922

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Classified By: POL/ECON Jim Wojtasiewicz, reasons 1.4 (B) and (D).

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Summary
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1. (C) The Cote d'Ivoire peace train has slowed to a barely
perceptible crawl. Disarmament, Demobilization and
Reintegration (DDR),dismantling of militias, and
identification of Ivoirian nationals are supposed to be
proceeding concomitantly but instead they are bogging down
concomitantly. DDR is on hold after the rebel New Forces
(FN) suspended their participation, and what progress had
been made on this seems to be slipping away. The
dismantlement of militias is also on hold, because of the low
numbers of weapons turned in. The FN suspended participation
in DDR after President Gbagbo forced Prime Minister Banny to
change the procedures for registering undocumented Ivoirians
and foreigners, which is a crucial step toward preparing for
elections. Both the FN and the political opposition rejected
the new procedures, and the political opposition has given
Banny eight days to rescind them. Even assuming the new
procedures are eventually accepted, in the worst case they
could send the identification process back to square one, and
even in the best case they will significantly lengthen the
time needed to do it. After that there are more
controversies and disputes ahead over how to actually issue
identification cards to Ivoirians and eventually register
them to vote.


2. (C) With key elements of the peace process stalled and
October around the corner, attention is turning to what will
happen after President Gbagbo's one-year extension in office
ends. As happened a year ago, Gbagbo insists he has the
constitutional power to extend his own term as many times as
he wants; the opposition insists he does not and must go. We
anticipate that the international community's decision-making
process will follow the same lines as last year: the African
Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS) will agree on a way forward and the Security Council
will endorse it. We anticipate that African leaders will not
have much appetite for the international community to
intervene in Cote d'Ivoire now any more directly than it has
already, and thus we will likely see a one-year rollover of
the current arrangements. Some progress has been made over
the last year, but looking back at how little has been
achieved and looking ahead at how many obstacles still need
to be overcome, the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI)
will have difficulty organizing elections even by October

2007. End summary.

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Peace Train Crawling
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3. (C) The Cote d'Ivoire peace train has slowed to a barely
perceptible crawl, with DDR, dismantling of militias, and
identification/voter registration, all stalled.

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Disarmament
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4. (C) The decision by the FN to suspend, for the moment,
their participation in military-military talks between the
chiefs of staff of the FANCI (the Armed Forces of Cote
d'Ivoire) and the FAFN (Armed Forces of the New Forces)
brought the DDR process to a standstill (ref A).


5. (C) In any case even before Soro suspended FN
participation, little real progress had been made on DDR.
Both FANCI and FN had claimed to have completed the
pre-regroupment phase of disarmament, where ex-combatants are
assembled at designated sites but remain under their own
command structure. However, for the FANCI this had little
practical effect, since in most cases it only meant that the
units to be eventually disarmed remained in their barracks.
For the FAFN, pre-regroupment did mean moving forces to other
sites, but most of the pre-regroupment sites in the north
were not habitable. Embassy officers have visited several of
these sites since pre-regroupment was declared to be
completed and they were nearly empty of FAFN soldiers. Two
important steps were supposed to be taken at the August 8

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meeting, that the FAFN boycotted, of the quadripartite
monitoring group composed of the FANCI, FAFN, the UN
Operation in Cote d'Ivoire (ONUCI) and the French Licorne
peacekeeping force. One was that the FAFN were to finally
hand over a list of their combatants, so that the
international peacekeepers could verify that they were all in
pre-regroupment sites. The other was that discussions were
to begin about moving to the regroupment phase, where the
combatants come under the control of international
peacekeepers. The meeting never took place and those two
next steps are now on hold, even as what progress had been
made on pre-regroupment slips away.

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Militias
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6. (C) The dismantlement of pro-Gbagbo militias in the West,
announced with great fanfare July 26 (ref B),has also ground
to a halt. Jean-Luc Stallone, head of ONUCI's DDR
department, told a meeting of local representatives of
members of the International Working Group August 14 that the
UN had advised the National Program for DDR (PNDDR) to
suspend the program indefinitely because of the low ratio of
the number of weapons turned over to the number of combatants
signing up to be paid for dismantling. FN leader Soro took
note of this low ratio of weapons turnover in his August 8
statement, calling the program a masquerade and noting that
at the same time dismantlement was supposed to be taking
place, armed militias attacked the maritime police (ref C).
Soro cited this incident, and the deaths of civilians at the
hands of militias demonstrating against the mobile courts
(audiences foraines -- AF) seeking to register undocumented
Ivoirians and foreigners (ref D),as evidence of the
"passivity" of the defense and security forces in protecting
the population, and he called for increased priority to be
given in the DDR process to the restructuring of the armed
forces and the creation of an integrated FANCI/FAFN joint
staff. Former FAFN Western Zone Commander Losseny Fofana
(who is one of the four Ivoirians currently subject to UN
sanctions) said in a newspaper interview August 11 that the
FAFN are now conditioning their own disarmament on the
finding of Western militia weapons.

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Identification/Voter Registration
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7. C) The issue that FN leader Guillaume Soro cited as the
reason for suspending participation in DDR was President
Gbagbo's declaration that the AF's can only issue birth
registrations, not a second form of documentation that
provisionally establishes Ivoirian nationality for those
entitled to it. Gbagbo and his FPI party are also claiming
that some of the magistrates conducting the AF's were not
legally appointed. Those actions have plunged the whole
identification process into uncertainty (ref D). In the
worst case, all the nationality certificates and even some of
the birth registrations already issued could be invalidated,
sending the process essentially back to square one. In the
best case, another cumbersome step has been added to the
sequence of actions needed to document Ivoirians and register
them to vote. The UN was estimating that it would take ten
months for the AF's to finish issuing birth registrations and
certificates of nationality to all undocumented Ivoirians,
and even that seemed optimistic. With the delays that have
now occurred, and the apparent need for Ivoirians to go back
to a second court for their nationality certificate after
they receive their birth registration, this process will
surely take much longer than that.


8. (C) Then, after all Ivoirians have certificates of
nationality, they will need to receive actual national
identification cards. There is still no agreement, or even
any real discussion, about what procedure to use to issue
identification cards. The procedure for issuing
identification cards has been a very contentious issue since
the late 1990's -- it was one of the things that led to the
2002 coup attempt/rebellion. At that time President Gbagbo
and the FPI had instituted a controversial new procedure that
did not recognize the certificate of nationality. It was
agreed under Linas-Marcoussis in 2003 to go back to a
procedure based on the certificate of nationality. However,
it appears that under the law enacted by the FPI-controlled
National Assembly in 2004 supposedly to implement the new
procedure, every single Ivoirian will have to get a new
identification card. The issue of how to implement a new
procedure under that law has not even been addressed.
Additionally, whatever the new procedure, after all of the

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recent controversy it appears likely that the FPI will
challenge many of the newly issued certificates of
nationality. All of this indicates that the identification
card step in the process will be contentious and
time-consuming.


9. (C) Finally, Ivoirians with identification cards will have
to be registered to vote. Currently there are two
controversies over the voter registration process. One is
whether to start with the 2000 voter list and update it, as
President Gbagbo and the FPI want, or to compile an entirely
new list, as the opposition insists. Indeed, Gbagbo even
said in his August 6 National Day address that it would be
illegal to compile a new list. However, the RHDP (Rally of
Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace),the grouping of the
four main political opposition parties, said in its August 14
declaration that the opposition has always challenged the
authenticity of the 2000 list because it was compiled by the
INS (National Institute of Statistics),which is controlled
by Gbagbo cronies. Scott Smith, Special Assistant to the UN
High Representative for Elections (HRE),told us August 17
that in theory it does not matter whether the old list is
used as a starting point. Once the identification database
has been built, it can simply be cross-checked against the
2000 voter list, to create an accurate updated list of
Ivoirians eligible to register to vote.


10. (C) However, this leads to a second controversy over
voter registration -- the role of the INS in the process.
Smith told us that Prime Minister Banny is planning to hire
an "operator" to build one data base to be used both for
issuing identification cards and creating, one way or the
other, a list of eligible voters. However, this leaves
unclear the role of the INS, which was in charge of preparing
the voter registration list in the past. The opposition has
long charged that the INS is politically compromised and
should not be in charge of preparing this list. They thought
they had won agreement in the Pretoria II Agreement that the
politically balanced Independent Electoral Commission (CEI)
would control this process. However, the Gbagbo camp has
continued to assert that the wording of Pretoria II actually
leaves the INS completely in charge, required only to keep
the CEI informed of its actions. This dispute was submitted
to South African President Mbeki for mediation, and last
month he issued a ruling siding with the FPI interpretation.
Smith told us this significantly complicates the mechanics of
voter registration. Prime Minister Banny was planning to
allow Ivoirians to register to vote at the same time they
receive their identification cards, based on the same data
base of Ivoirian nationals as noted above. However, the INS
appears intent on carrying out its own process of preparing a
voter list, based solely on the 2000 list and independently
from the identification process. This would not only add
time to the whole identification/registration process, but it
would diminish the credibility of the voter list and
potentially its accuracy as well. Smith told us that Prime
Minister Banny is exploring with the FPI ways to keep the INS
"responsible" for the list while it is actually compiled from
the operator's database.

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Looking Ahead
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11. (C) With so many elements of the peace process stalled
and October just around the corner, increased attention is
being given to whether President Gbagbo will remain in office
after that. Gbagbo stated flatly in his August 8 National
Day address that he intends to use his emergency powers under
the Constitution to extend his term in office as many times
as necessary. However, Soro in his August 8 communique and
the RHDP in their August 14 declaration adamantly rejected
any extension of Gbagbo's term. Less attention is being
given to Prime Minister Banny, whose post-October fate is
also presumably uncertain at least in theory. However, the
RHDP's ultimatum to Banny to rescind the new AF procedures
within 8 days or else could well have been intended to lay
down a marker that he cannot count on their support after
October.


12. (C) Eyes are also turning toward New York, where
Secretary General Annan said there would be a meeting on Cote

SIPDIS
d'Ivoire on the margins of the National Assembly in
September. Mariama Gamatie-Bayard, Director of ONUCI's
Political Department, told us August 15 that there is still
no agreement on the date or the format for the meeting, and
that President Gbagbo is balking at attending. She said his
office told ONUCI that Gbagbo will neither agree to be
summoned to New York for another "mini-summit" of Ivoirian

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political leaders with Annan and African regional leaders,
nor will he participate in a gathering of the international
community to dictate his fate after October.

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Comment
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13. (C) DDR, dismantling of the militia, and identification
are supposed to be proceeding concomitantly but instead they
are bogging down concomitantly. All sides seem to have
abandoned any pretense that there will be elections in
October, or any time soon thereafter, and are now laying down
markers for the post-October scenario. What we have seen so
far is pretty much a repeat of 12 months ago, with Gbagbo
declaring that he has the power under the Constitution to
extend his own term, and the opposition insisting that he has
no such power and must not remain. It is the opposition that
is appealing more openly to the international community, but
we suspect that Gbagbo and his followers are also quite
concerned about what the international community might do, or
at least try to do, to limit his room for maneuver after
October.


14. (C) Last year the international community's
decision-making process on what should happen after October
also started in New York, in September, on the margins of the
General Assembly, but it was with a meeting of the AU's Peace
and Security Council. They asked ECOWAS to come up with a
way forward, which ECOWAS adopted in Abuja, the AU accepted
in Addis Ababa, and the Security Council endorsed via UNSCR
1633 on October 21. Whatever happens with Secretary General
Annan's proposed New York meeting, we would anticipate a
similar scenario this year. As for the outcome, African
ambassadors in Abidjan tell us that the AU does not have much
appetite for the international community to intervene in Cote
d'Ivoire any more directly now than it has already, and we
will probably see a one-year rollover of the current
arrangements.


15. (C) Mess might be a better word than arrangements. There
has been some progress over the last year. Procedures are in
place for identification, albeit contested and very slow
moving ones. A start was made on DDR and dismantlement of
the militias, though both are now on hold. However, looking
back at how little has been achieved, and looking ahead at
how many obstacles still need to be overcome, the Independent
Electoral Commission will have difficulty organizing
elections even by October 2007. end Comment.

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