Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is the African's Union Special envoy to Ivory Coast
Prime Minister Raila Odinga returns to the country today, after a week-long mission on Ivory Coast, which saw him visit five other countries in a 24-hour diplomatic blitz that began on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister’s jet is expected to touch down at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport at 2 PM where he will hold a media briefing. He will proceed to Bondo later in the day for the memorial of his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, to be held tomorrow.
Mr Odinga’s African Union mission to find a resolution to the electoral crisis in Cote d"Ivoire got a dramatic boost when three key West African presidents strongly asserted their support for the Ecowas and AU decisions to ensure that Mr. Laurent Gbagbo should relinquish power and hand over to the lawfully elected President, Mr. Alassane Ouattara. All three indicated that they supported the additional steps that were being taken to implement the regional decisions. They also agreed that President Ouattara should be invited to the AU summit in Addis Ababa next week, as the AU no longer recognized Mr. Gbagbo as the country’s leader.
In a 16 hour diplomatic blitz Wednesday that took Mr. Odinga from Cote d"Ivoire to Ghana to Mali and finally Burkina Faso, Presidents John Ata-Mills, Amadou Toumani Toure and Blaise Campaore expressed strong appreciation for Mr. Odinga’s efforts and full backing for the steps he had so far taken to seek Mr. Gbabgo’s peacefully relinquishing power to President Ouattara. Time is of the essence if a greater conflict is to be averted, and the PM has wanted to have wide range of discussions with African leaders before he prepares his report and recommendations on the next steps on Cote d’Ivoire to the AU summit in Addis Ababa next week.
"I am gratified that the three presidents were so supportive of both the AU and Ecowas resolutions and of the steps I have taken to implement them," Mr. Odinga said last night. "A united African stand and continued isolation and strong financial and other sanctions against if Mr. Gbagbo if he refuses to step down is the best way to avoid the use of lawful force that the AU and Ecowas have decreed as a last resort."
All three presidents agreed that Mr. Odinga’s strategy of persuading Mr. Gbagbo to recognize that his stepping down was the only way to prevent his country plunging into further turmoil and severe economic hardships, a step that Mr. Odinga has said would also honour Mr. Gbagbo’s pioneering legacy of fighting for democracy in Cote D’Ivoire.
The first step in Prime Minister Odinga’s itinerary was Ghana, which some media reports had indicated had expressed reservations about the Ecowas position on the use of force as a last resort. President Ata-Mills took the opportunity of the meeting with the Prime Minster in categorically rejecting these media reports.
"Our position has been grossly misrepresented," Mr. Mills told the PM. "We stand by Ecowas and its declarations, including the use of lawful force if all our peaceful overtures fail. It is imperative we speedily resolve the Cote d’Ivoire crisis, which could have regional wider repercussions. We stand behind your mission fully and I myself have urged Mr. Gbagbo to step down."
President Mills said his country, with a long record of service to African and UN peacekeeping, currently had troops serving in Sudan, Liberia, DRC, Lebanon and Cote d’Ivoire, where they are protecting President Ouattara. The armed forces were really overstretched and so the country could not offer any troops for a military intervention in case that becomes necessary. That position was misinterpreted in some quarters and he had just sent a letter to Ecowas member states stressing his solidarity with the organization’s decisions.
The PM’s next stop was in Mali, a key Ecowas country which hosts both the organization’s Monetary Union headquarters and its Central Bank. Mali also hosts the Ecowas military commissions.
Mali President Toure very warmly thanked the PM for travelling to Mali to brief him, indicating that he considered the PM’s approach to resolving the crisis "exactly right." He emphasized the unacceptability of President Ouattara being blockaded and the impossibility of holding negotiations when one party was in virtual prison. "I will support all needed actions that our organizations now propose to resolve the crisis," he said.
The president pointed out that a heads of state summit on financial matters was taking place in Bamako on Saturday, where a ministerial proposal to remove Mr. Gbagbo as the signatory for the release of funds to Cote d’Ivoire and replace it with President Ouattara would be decided on. The President said he would as summit chairman support that proposal. He also said the Ecowas Military Commission had that very day concluded a meeting at which the strategy for any military intervention that might become necessary was drawn up.
In Ouagadougou, President Compaore met Mr. Oodinga right after he landed from a European tour he had undertaken as part of the Ecowas lobbying for international support for ensuring he handing over of power to President Ouattara. Mr. Campaore had met among others French President Nikolas Sarkozy and Deputy PM Nick Clegg of the United Kingdom. They both said their countries stood ready to provide the support the AU and Ecowas requested.
The PM said he had discovered a similar willingness from the ambassadors of key UN Secuity Council members he had briefed in Abidjan on his proposals on Tuesday. He said it was most reassuring that the international community recognized the threat the electoral impasse posed to the region, and was determined to support Africa in its efforts to resolve t speedily.
Burkina Faso is a key country in the extended web of interconnecting regional initiatives in the long search for peace in Cote d’Ivoire. President Campaore chairs the implementation arm of the Ouagadougou Process which defined the entire peace and reconciliation process following the devastating civil war.
Mr. Campaore expressed his appreciation for PM Odinga’s efforts, and for the fact that he had twice now in two weeks travelled all the way from the easternmost edge of the continent to West Africa. He said he was pleased the PM had understood so well the situation and the people in this crisis. He fully supported all the steps proposed so far, but emphasized that force would have to be used if all the PM’s proposals for a peaceful settlement were rebuffed.
"Unless we ourselves manage the installation of Mr. Ouattara as the lawful president, the tensions will boil over in the country and could result in great and potentially uncontrolled violence," Mr. Compaore told the PM. "Please continue spreading the message of unity over the steps needed to restore peace. That is the only way we can minimize the suffering of the people of Cote d’Ivoire.’
Yesterday, the Prime Minster held discussions with President Dos Santos of Angola and wound his trip with a meeting with President Jacob Zuma last night.
AfricanVoices Team
Nairobi
No comments:
Post a Comment