CHAD'S POLITICAL DIALOGUE DEADLOCK

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 NDJAMENA 000989

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SUBJECT: CHAD'S POLITICAL DIALOGUE DEADLOCK


Classified By: POL/ECON OFFICER MICHAEL P. ZORICK, REASONS 1.4 (B) AND
(D).

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SUMMARY:
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1. (C) Post's monitoring of Chad's political pulse since the
May 3 Presidential poll indicates, with each passing week,
less and less life in any of the ideas so far proposed to
bring a political solution to Chad's institutional crises.
The two major blocks in the face-off, roughly centered on
President Idriss Deby Itno and on the Coordination of the
Political Parties for the Defense of the Constitution (CPDC),
have backed themselves into their respective corners, and
there seems no out for them to meet each other half way.
Deby will do whatever it takes to ensure his own regime
survival, while the opposition insists that his
marginalization must be the end result of dialogue. The
opposition will not trust any initiative that comes from
Deby, and will not entertain dialogue without international
community control of the process and armed rebel
participation. The two sides appear to be irreconcilable.
If there is any chance of breaking the deadlock, President
Deby will have to demonstrate more convincingly than he has
so far that this time he is serious about reconciling with
his opponents and undertaking real reform. END SUMMARY.


2. (SBU) Post has engaged over the past several weeks in
extensive political consultations with a wide variety of
players from among Chad's political elite. We have had a
series of private conversations with members of Chad's legal
political opposition; individual "Wise Men" from President
Idriss Deby Itno's committee of the same name; with regional
governors, business leaders, and civil society activists.


3. (SBU) In each case, we have asked our interlocutors the
same questions: Where is the "escape hatch" from Chad's
current political, military, economic and social crisis?
What is required of each of the key actors to allow them to
walk through that door? Are they capable of the political
and personal compromises necessary to pursue constructive
dialogue? Do they believe the country is in crisis -- and do
they want peace? We have discerned some patterns to the
responses we have received, but there is one common element
to virtually every conversation to date. No one to whom we
have talked believes that it is now possible to have a
credible political dialogue that can address Chad's many
critical problems.

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BLAME THE OPPOSITION
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4. (SBU) Lamana Abdoulaye, a Committee of Wise Men member who
is the head of a Deby-allied political party, "Union
Nationale", as well as the President of the petroleum revenue
oversight body, perhaps best represented the school of
thought that may be summed up as "the Opposition Refuses to
Talk".


5. (C) Lamana and other Deby allies dismiss the leaders of
the legal opposition parties grouped under the umbrella of
the Coordination of the Political Parties for the Defense of
the Constitution (CPDC) as having no impact whatsoever in the
country, unless they agree to dialogue on the President's
terms. Per Lamana, Chad's political parties, rather than
drawing support and funds from a popular base, are instead
charities which must have resources to hand out in return for
voter support. As they are outside government, the
opposition parties in the CPDC have no money or ability to
influence public opinion, and the President can safely ignore
them. And, since each of them was at one time a Deby ally

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and minister, their credibility is suspect throughout the
county's political class. This is all the more true when the
CPDC members take as their starting point for dialogue the
international community imposing on Deby acceptance of
significant curtailment of presidential and executive power.
According to Lamana, Chadians see this as an unsophisticated
effort by politicians on the "outs" to use the international
community to remove Deby from office. This, Lamana said, the
President would never accept -- and because he has control of
the state's levers (those few that still function),he has no
need to acquiesce to these terms.


6. (C) Lamana said that the opposition politicians should
face facts: The President will remain President, and will
exercise the powers of the executive. The best the
opposition can do is to conduct a cooperative dialogue with
the government, which President Deby seeks to launch through
his Committee of Wise Men. The President can then conduct
the affairs of state, and return to the discussion as a
"referee" if needed to keep things moving along. Lamana
thought Deby would allow such a dialogue to address CPDC
members' major concerns from 2003 -- a new census, achieving
a balanced electoral board, and cleaning up the electoral
code. Lamana thought this would already be a huge step
forward, given that Deby had previously refused to even
consider changes to the electoral code, and the opposition
should be satisfied with this -- all other subjects they have
proposed, including government, security, or financial
reform, were prerogatives of the executive, and could not be
the subjects of a political dialogue.


7. (C) This school of thought finishes its argument by
acknowledging that the opposition politicians cannot accept
to participate in a dialogue on these terms. As Lamana
points out, they have already made very public their starting
point -- that Deby accept a process of dialogue that is
controlled by outsiders (AU, EC, UNDP, donors) and is
predicated on curtailment of his powers. Anything less is
absolute defeat for them, and so they will continue to refuse
to talk to the President. And, in their refusal to talk,
they leave Deby free rein. He will continue to "govern," and
they become daily more irrelevant.


8. (C) Lamana and others close to Deby -- especially
Committee of Wise Men member and Presidential Counselor
Abderahman Moussa -- save special mention for the
opposition's insistence that representatives of the
"political military groups" (the armed Chadian rebels) be
included from the beginning of a political dialogue. They
suggest that the political opposition seems to somehow draw
legitimacy-by-proxy from the armed groups, despite the
absence of formal ties. Deby allies point to the
opposition's idea that including the armed groups in dialogue
goes hand in hand with the requirement that the international
community control the dialogue process. Neither idea is in
the least acceptable to President -- he cannot openly
negotiate with men who want to overthrow his government, and
he cannot allow the international community to impose this on
him.


9. (C) However, no less than Deby's Minister for Foreign
Affairs told us that Deby's envoys are in fact discretely
negotiating with selected members of the armed opposition, a
clear recognition that they represent a much greater threat
to him than the political opposition. Past history shows
Deby to be adept at buying off his most dangerous opponents
with cash or position as he did with former National
Resistance Alliance rebel-turned-current Telecommunications
and Post Minister Brigadier General Mahamat Garfa. He has
been equally adept, when these reconciliation efforts have
turned sour, at killing off his armed opponents, as he is
accused of in the case in 1993 with Abbas Kotty of the
National Rectification Council (CNR),or in 2000 with Moise

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Kette Nodji and the Committee for a National Beginning for
Peace and Democracy (CSNPD).


10. (C) This, then, is the rub. The President's advisors and
"wise men" say Deby is fully prepared to conduct a highly
"presidential" type of political dialogue. They point to the
political opposition's declarations and refusals to cooperate
in such a conversation, and say it proves these men and their
parties are simply not relevant. They say the President will
nonetheless move forward with his process, and talk to those
who will talk to him: the 38 parties formally allied to the
President's MPS Party, and those of the remaining 30-plus
parties that are neither with the CPDC nor with the MPS
alliance.

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THE PRESIDENT CANNOT BE TRUSTED
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11. (SBU) Key CPDC members Lol Mahamat Choua (RDP),Ibni
Oumar Mahamat Saleh (PLD),Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue (UDR),
Salibou Garba (AND),Saleh Kebzabo (UNDR),and Jean Alingue
(URD),have maintained strong solidarity since the May 3
presidential election that they all boycotted. Privately and
publicly, they have stayed on-message on the essentials: (a)
that no credible political dialogue is possible without the
full involvement of the international community to hem in
President Deby; (b) that armed rebel groups must be
integrated into the dialogue, a requirement that creates a
near-necessity for the conversation to be held outside Chad;
(c) that discussions must begin with an explicit, public
Presidential admission that the country is in crisis that
requires wide-ranging political, social and economic reforms
to address; and (d) that the conference will exercise
considerable powers, currently under the President's
executive control, in the process of addressing the crisis.


12. (C) Privately, at least some members are willing to
envisage that this process might entail keeping Deby in the
Presidency for the entirety of the next five years, as he
believes he is entitled by the results of the May 3 election.
But they are clear that such a presidency would be gradually
shorn of many of its executive powers, as the process of
electoral reform led to parliamentary elections, and that new
parliament -- brought to office without Deby's interference,
and so presumably now representative of Chad's political
class -- took action on political and economic reforms.


13. (C) The oppositionists are adamant that, as currently
proposed, the President's ideas for political dialogue are
designed to ensure two things: that the international
community is distracted by regular shows of empty political
exchanges among the 60-plus parties not member of the CPDC,
and thus sidetracked from asking the President to open Chad's
political system; and that the President stays entirely in
control of the country. CPDC members are loath to join in
any such process, knowing that where the international
community may be fooled, the Chadian people won't, and their
political viability will be demolished by participating in a
Deby-led charade. Those who have told us about invitations
they have received from Deby's personal emissaries to engage
in talks have all therefore so far rejected these overtures.


14. (C) Thus, they're stuck. In the opposition's view,
President Deby will only engage in a masquerade, including
plenty of grist for the papers and radio, but no opening for
the country to address the crisis building in its society, in
its economy, and at its borders. They cannot accept being
drawn into such a process, and by cooperating, legitimize the
President. They thus refuse to engage, and continue as best
they can to raise the warning alarm: As long as there is no
credible dialogue, and no attempt to directly involve the
armed rebel groups, these latter will organize, plot, and

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inevitably attack if they can settle their internal questions
of political leadership. This is not a result the CPDC
members seek. They have few illusions that the rebels,
should they take power by force, will then hand it to the
political opposition.

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COMMENT: IS THERE ANY WAY OUT?
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15. (C) Discussions with representatives drawn from across
Chad's political elite show virtually no room at this time
for a credible dialogue between President Deby and his
political opposition. We expect Deby will seek to keep the
international community distracted with regular announcements
of committees, meetings, conferences and papers on dialogue.
He will likely succeed in buying off some of his opposition.
Others will self-marginalize by their refusal to talk on his
terms. Still others he will accuse of associating with armed
rebel movements, a charge of which some will be guilty. Deby
will refuse a legitimizing voice in any discussion to armed
"political-military" groups, leaving them to fulminate in the
south and east -- and to plot. Chad's political opposition
will most likely continue to stand aside, doing nothing to
accommodate Deby, and proving themselves to be essentially as
irrelevant to the solution of the country's problems as the
President believes them to be.


16. (C) We, along with the European Union and other
international partners, have called repeatedly for
initiatives that could break this deadlock. But no amount of
coaxing or strong-arming on our part will get very far if the
major actors themselves are not committed. The key rests
largely in President Deby's hands. He needs to demonstrate
that this time he is sincere not only about talking with his
opponents, but also about introducing the reforms necessary
to open up the political system. To have any hope of being
taken seriously, he will have to launch several initiatives
at the outset, e.g., formation of a government of national
unity with powers to pursue a credible reform program,
electoral reforms before next year's legislative elections, a
commitment to handing power over to a new leader after his
next term is complete. If he fails in this attempt to reach
out to his enemies, the odds are stacked dangerously in favor
of more fighting over political succession, not the beginning
of a political dialogue for peace. END COMMENT


17. (U) Tripoli Minimize Considered.
WALL