Burkina Faso Believes Cote d'Ivoire Ready for Peace,

C O N F I D E N T I A L OUAGADOUGOU 001080 SIPDIS DEPT FOR AF/W E.O. 12958: DECL:12-10-2027 TAGS: PREL PGOV PBTS MASS UNGA UV IV SUBJECT: Burkina Faso Believes Cote d'Ivoire Ready for Peace, Ouagadougou Peace Accord (OPA) is the Way Reftel: Ouagadougou 0995 ¶1. Classified by Amb. Jeanine Jackson for 1.5 (b) ¶2. (C) Summary. Intense diplomacy by Burkina Faso's President Compaore led to the November 29 signature by Ivorian President Gbagbo and Prime Minister Soro of two side agreements to the Ouagadougou Peace Accord (OPA). These side agreements provide for: -- Presidential elections by June 30, 2008; -- a framework for returning former rebels to civilian life or the armed forces; and -- reestablishment of government services in northern Cote d'Ivoire. ¶3. (C) MOFA's Cabinet Director, a direct participant in this diplomacy, was optimistic the OPA would work because Ivorians had grown tired of the neither-peace-nor-war status quo, and because Compaore had convinced each main Presidential hopeful in Cote d'Ivoire that they could win the June elections. Progress was also made November 29 in designating a contractor for the issuance of ID cards. Working groups -- despite difficulties including an angry exit by the Ivorian Interior Minister -- continue to seek consensus on technical details related to ID cards and electoral lists; Compaore's Personal Representative for Cote d'Ivoire plans a January meeting to discuss mobile tribunals. Compaore and the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Cote d'Ivoire met November 29; the UN's role since the OPA's advent has been secondary, but supportive. At the request of other heads of state, Compaore delayed until January ECOWAS/WAEMU meetings where Cote d'Ivoire will be discussed. A former rebel now exiled in Benin does not pose a threat to the OPA. End Summary. -------------- - Intense Diplomacy Leads to OPA Side Agreements -------------- - ¶4. (C) The approximately 10-day period ending November 29 was a period of intense Burkinabe diplomacy about the Ouagadougou Peace Accord (OPA),with five discussions or events about: -- identity cards, whose talks in Ouagadougou were ended abruptly and angrily on November 22 by Ivorian Interior Minister Desire Tagro, who wanted to have the Ivorian National Institute of Statistics (INS) replace a neutral, third party contractor, the French company SAGEM, in carrying out the technical work of issuance ID cards; -- financing of the OPA, with Charles Koffi Diby and Amadou Kone, �0A;respectively Ivorian Ministers of Economy and Finance, and of African Integration, who met November 24 in Ouagadougou with Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore; -- two complementary side agreements to the OPA concerning SEGEM and key OPA implementation issues, with Compaore hosting Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro in Ouagadougou on November 27; -- the United Nation's role in supporting the OPA, with a November 29 meeting in Ouagadougou between Young Jin Choi, the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for Cote d'Ivoire and President Compaore; and, -- the signing of two side agreements, on November 29, in the northern Ivorian city of Korogho by Gbagbo and Soro, in the presence of Burkina Faso Foreign Minister Djibril Bassolet and MOFA Cabinet Director Vincent Zakane. -------------- Ivorians, Africans, World Tired of Standoff -------------- ¶5. (C) Zakane, who is also a University of Ouagadougou law professor, told DCM and PolOff December 6 that the OPA's implementation had been blocked by "technical" difficulties, but was firmly back on track with the November 29 signature of the side agreements. Zakane was hopeful that elections in Cote d'Ivoire would be held by the end of June. The fundamental reason for optimism was that, in his view, all concerned had grown tired of a neither-peace-nor war status quo since the rebellion ended in 2005. The people of southern and northern Cote d'Ivoire wanted peace, Zakane felt, and many had forgotten why the rebellion started in the first place. They were demanding basic government services, such as education and transport. Other African countries and the broader international community had also grown tired with the current standoff, whose peacekeeping costs were expensive for the UN and France, he said. -------------- -- Gbagbo, Rebels: Elections Needed For Legitimacy -------------- -- ¶6. (C) Gbagbo wanted the elections to be held because his legitimacy as President of Cote d'Ivoire was increasingly at risk of being questioned by his fellow citizens, Zakane said. Gbagbo was elected for a five-year term that ended October 30, 2005, Zakane explained. Gbagbo thus had "no constitutional basis" to be President, and only the UN Security Council's backing through resolutions. Gbagbo yearned for the political legitimacy that could only come with an election, Zakane felt, and wanted to be President of a whole country, not half of one. Gbagbo's late November trip to Korogho was salutary for Gbagbo, because this visit to northern Cote d'Ivoire allowed him to "feel legitimate," Zakane felt. ¶7. (C) The Forces Nouvelles, on the other hand, were incapable of governing, e.g. because there was no legal basis for them to do so, Zakane stated. They had successfully made demands on the Ivorian Government, such as pressing for ID cards, but this was not the same thing as governing. Their financial situation had also become "less comfortable," because they now had more difficulty in levying illegal taxes from zones in the north, he said. -------------- Secret to OPA Success: Make Ivorian SIPDIS Political Camps Believe They Can Win Election -------------- ¶8. (C) The "secret" to the success of the OPA, Zakane confided, was for its Facilitator, President Compaore, to make each Ivorian political camp believe it had a real chance to win the Presidential elections. For now, Compaore had been successful in doing this. The "Presidential camp" thinks Gbagbo will win; the Democratic Party of Cote d'Ivoire (PDCI) believes Bedie can win; and the Rally for Republicans (RDR) Party thinks that its leader (Alassane Ouattara) can win. However, each time one of the main political parties began to think that it has lost hope of winning the election, Zakane explained, it sounded the alarm and the OPA re-fell off track. ¶9. (C) After UNSC 1765 was adopted, for example, the RDR protested and wrote to Compaore and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to denounce the elimination of the High-level Electoral Representative (HRE) because it thought this would allow Gbagbo to fix the elections, Zakane recalled. Compaore was obliged, working with the Secretary General, to convince the RDR that this was not the case since the roles of electoral certification and arbitration still existed and were shared, respectively, between the UN Special Representative and the Facilitator. -------------- -- OPA's 2nd, 3rd Side Agreements: ID Cards, Rebel Reinsertion or (Re-)Integration -------------- -- ¶10. (C) Zakane explained that the first complementary side agreement to the OPA had been signed back in March, so that the two agreements signed on November 29 were known as the second and third side agreements. The second side agreement designated SAGEM as the contracted company for technical aspects of creating ID cards. The third side agreement called for Presidential elections by June 30. ¶11. (C) Two other key elements of the third side agreement related how rebel soldiers would be "re-inserted" as civilians, or "integrated" (or "re-integrated" in the case of rebels who were former Ivorian soldiers) into the new defense and security forces (FOS),Zakane said. Both the Ivorian security forces and rebel forces (FAFN) will contribute soldiers who will become part of the FOS's Integrated Command Center (CCI). 600 former rebels will be given police or gendarmes positions, in accordance with the terms of the earlier Pretoria Accord (which preceded the OPA),Zakane explained. There would be a quota of rebels who will be reintegrated into the army, he said, while those not joining or returning to the defense and security forces would also be given civil service jobs. It was still unclear how many rebels will need to be taken care of, Zakane added, but the current plan was to grant payments to "former rebels and other sympathizers" to encourage their demobilization. -------------- - Other Key Elements of Third OPA Side Agreement -------------- - ¶12. (C) Other key elements of the third side agreement, per press reporting, are: -- adoption by December 15, 2007 of legal texts fixing FOS's structure, composition, and functioning; -- disarmament, dismantling, and regrouping of former rebels by December 22, under CCI command; -- monthly payments by Ivorian Government to former rebels while (re)integration and reinsertion are on-going; -- payment to former rebels re-integrated into the Ivorian armed forces, gendarmerie or paramilitary corps of back pay starting on an April 12, 2007 amnesty ordinance. -- arbitration by OPA "Facilitator" President Compaore of a quota for the number of former rebels to be integrated into the FOS, and their ranks; -- recruitment for the civil service, including reinsertion of former rebels, to start by December 22; -- redeployment of customs and tax administration, under the principle of equal application of assessments/duties throughout the country, in the north starting by December 30; -- restart of public administration in the north, to be completed by January 30, 2008; -- restart by December 31 of the process of reconstituting civil registers destroyed during the rebellion, concomitant with the "audience foraines" (mobile tribunals) determining nationality; -- Ivorian Government commitment to fund the above operations on a calendar consistent with the side agreement's dates. -- weekly consultations in Abidjan with the Facilitator's representative, Boureima Badini, about OPA implementation; -------------- Mobile Tribunals: Donors Wait for Proof of Progress Before Opening Purses? -------------- ¶13. (C) Regarding the audiences foraines, Zakane recalled that the OPA had called for 111 mobile tribunals, which were to have completed their work by December 24, 2007. Because of insufficient resources, however, only 25 audience foraines were operational. Badini plans to hold meetings in January with the Evaluation and Accompaniment Committee (CEA) and the International Consultative Body (OCI),during which, inter alia, he hoped to review progress made by the audiences foraines, and encourage donors to disburse financing. Donors had been hesitating in fulfilling their financial pledges while they waited for evidence that the OPA was being implemented, Zakane felt, but should now be more optimistic about its prospects. -------------- Heads of State Review on Cote d'Ivoire Delayed to January -------------- ¶14. (C) Zakane explained that President Compaore had planned to discuss Cote d'Ivoire on the margins of West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meetings scheduled for December 16 and 17. However, these meetings had been delayed at the request of other heads of state and will most likely be held in January, he said. -------------- UN Adjusting Well to Supporting Role in OPA -------------- ¶15. (C) When asked how the United Nations was accommodating what some observers have considered a diminished role following the signing of the OPA, Zakane recalled that, historically, the UN Security Council had stepped in to address the Ivorian crisis when ECOWAS and, in turn, the African Union (AU) had been unable to tackle it. UNSC resolutions 1366 and 1721 on Cote d'Ivoire had been indispensable, particularly 1721, which had allowed for a rebalancing of power between the Ivorian President and Prime Minister. ¶16. (C) The Ouagadougou Peace Accord merely returned leadership in resolving the Ivorian crisis to the regional level, Zakane said. The Parties to the OPA expect that the UN would continue to play a secondary but supportive role, e.g. through its peacekeeping operation in Cote d'Ivoire (UNOCI),aided by the French military efforts there (LICORNE). While Resolution 1765 had eliminated the (UN) role of the High-level Electoral Representative (HRE),Zakane felt, the roles of election certification (the responsibility of the UN Special Representative, Choi) and arbitration (the role the Facilitator, Compaore) were now shared under the OPA. The Facilitator also shares certain responsibilities with the Evaluation and Accompaniment Committee (CEA). The Facilitator will continue to have a collaborative relation with the UN; Choi, for his part, understands his role and that Resolution 1765 has language supporting the OPA, Zakane concluded. -------------- -------------- Tagro's Gambit Fails; Gbagbo Arrives to "Clean Up"? -------------- -------------- ¶17. (C) Providing background on the late November series of talks, Zakane admitted that they had started off poorly. Tagro, according to press reports, tried to introduce a last-minute proposal on INS, and left abruptly when it became clear this was a non-starter for the Forces Nouvelles opposition, and for Compaore. (The OPA created two working groups led by Soro as "President," and Tagro as "Vice President" to address 1) ID cards; and 2) election lists, Zakane explained. The first working group also has members from the INS and the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI),while the second has members from CEI and the Office of National Identity.) ¶18. (C) The press here, clearly routing for the OPA's success, described Tagro's failed gambit as "L'Affaire Tagro," and Tagro as a "Black Sheep in Gbagboland." Diby and Kone's statements to the press on November 24 indeed give the impression that they were trying to repair damage caused by Tagro's blowup. In this regard, Zakane stated that President Gbagbo had come to Ouagadougou in November 27 to "clean up the situation" left by Tagro, and finalize a deal with Soro on side agreements. -------------- -------------- Former Rebel Coulibaly in Benin, no Threat to OPA -------------- -------------- ¶19. (C) Regarding former Ivorian rebel leader Ibrahim B. Coulibaly, Zakane confirmed his understanding that "Master Sergeant I.B." was currently exiled in Benin. He explained that Coulibaly had been exiled in Burkina Faso and France prior to arriving in Benin. Ivorian President Gbagbo pressed Benin's Defense Minister without success to have Coulibaly extradited. Beninese security officials had Coulibaly under surveillance, and he did not pose a threat to the Ivorian peace process, Zakane felt. Zakane also noted press speculation that Coulibaly was behind the June 29 rocket attack on the plane of Prime Minister Soro, but claimed not to know whether this was true. ¶20. (C) Personal relations between Compaore and Benin President Yayi Boni were cordial and not strained because of Coulibaly's exile, as had been asserted in the press, Zakane believed. Part of the perception of strained ties may have been caused by recent press reports of skirmishes along the roughly 15 kilometers of border between the two countries. These incidents were relatively unimportant, Zakane felt, adding a prediction that the two countries would eventually refer the case for arbitration by the International Court of Justice in the Hague. Jackson