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(EAST AFRICAN) Inside story of Raila’s no nonsense negotiations with incumbent Gbagbo

Inside story of Raila’s no nonsense negotiations with incumbent Gbagbo
By JAINDI KISERO (email the author)
Posted Monday, January 17 2011 at 00:00

On a recent Saturday morning, I went to interview Kenya’s Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who is now the African Union’s chief mediator in the political crisis in the Cote d’Ivoire at his private residence, an elegant colonial-style mansion in Nairobi’s Karen district.

It has spacious receiving rooms lined with generic African art and vases. Mr Odinga rushed to the room where I was waiting and apologised for keeping me waiting.

He had slept late the night before at a party to celebrate his 66th birthday. He had turned out dressed casually, a freely fitting white linen shirt and blue denim jeans trousers and black open shoes. The subject of the interview was the crisis in the Cote d’Ivoire.

I had wanted details on his recent sojourn as a mediator in Cote d’Ivoire and whether he believed his mission on Cote d’Ivoire had a realistic chance of success.

In the court of public opinion, Odinga’s critics were derisively dismissing him as the mediator with a fixed mind.

Twice, and even before he was appointed as AU’s chief mediator to the crisis in Cote d’Ivoire, he had come out publicly to call for use of force to oust President Laurent Gbagbo, who is clinging onto power after losing the election last month.

Mr Gbagbo has also barricade his rival, president-elect Alassanne Ouattara at a downtown hotel in Abidjan to prevent him from taking power after the United Nation’s declared him the winner in the election.

The first time he called for a military solution to resolve the crisis, was in Cancun, Mexico, when at the conclusion of the climate change conference he jointly addressed a press conference with the French Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.

Use of force

A week later, on his return from Cancun, he surprised friend and foe when he called for a surprise press conference in his office to repeat his call for military intervention in the crisis in Cote d’Ivoire.

“Can you really play neutral arbiter in this conflict having taken such a rigid position? How can President Gbagbo listen to you after publicly saying that he should be dethroned by military means?” I asked.

His reply was philosophical. “You must understand that in negotiations of this nature, success does not depend on mutual trust or some special chemistry between the mediator and the protagonists.’’

The pronouncements he had made about resorting to military action only made his position clearer, he argued.

“In such negotiations, you have better chance of success as mediator when you are upfront about what you want,” said Raila.

“You must have a bottom line mandate from where there can be no retreat,” he stressed.

Mr Odinga argued that he had called for a military solution as the last option. He would approach the negotiations with flexibility.

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Mr Odinga insisted that there was no contradiction between his earlier call for forceful removal of Gbagbo from power and his new role as a mediator since the remarks he had made were not different from the position taken by the international community, including Economic Commission for West African States (Ecowas), the African Union and the United Nations Security Council.

In his view, the forthright and candid views he had expressed on the crisis in the Cote d’Ivoire is what made the African Union to call on him to mediate and seek and end to the stalemate in Cote d’Ivoire.

Odinga’s immediate negotiation goals would make sure he fully addressed the immediate fears and insecurities of President Gbagbo, pointing out that he was well aware of the fact that he represented the views and feelings of a very large constituency that voted for him and that violently supports his cause.

“While a degree of flexibility and the spirit of give and take has to be maintained, I must go by the clear mandate given to me by the AU,” he said.

In a nutshell, Mr Odinga interprets his mandate to include the following.

First, to persuade Gbagbo to accept the results of the presidential elections held on November 28, 2010 and relinquish power.

Second, to secure a commitment from president-elect Ouattara to guarantee the freedom, safety, amnesty and security of the out-going president.

Third, to define a new role for Gbagbo after the crisis either within or outside Ivory Coast.

Fourth, secure the personal commitment of President Alassane Ouattara and that of his government to undertake within an agreed time frame and on the basis of UN-sponsored and supervised agreement, the establishment of a truth and reconciliation process to restore national cohesion and unity.

Fourth, secure the personal commitment of Ouattara and Gbagbo and other political leaders for immediate and complete secession of all acts of violence and full restoration of fundamental rights liberties and freedoms.

Fifth, to secure the commitment of president-elect Ouattara to undertake within a given time frame and on the bases of UN sponsored and supervised agreement, a truth and reconciliation process to aid restoration of national cohesion and unity.

Sixth, to secure personal commitment from Ouattara, on the basis of an AU and UN-supervised agreement, that he would reserve at least 25 Cabinet posts and other key government positions to pro-Gbagbo politicians as a way of eliminating the accusations of exclusion.

Finally, a complete disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration of armed combatants in the country.

How did he get involved and who appointed him?

Apparently, Mr Odinga was brought into the picture at the invitation of Dr Jean Ping, the chair of the African Union.

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Initially, the plans were that the AU would conduct its own mediation process parallel to what Ecowas was doing.

However, with key members of Ecowas, especially Nigeria going into local elections, and key members such as Ghana having responded to the idea of ousting Gbagbo with ambivalence, the leadership of the AU Commission had calculated that the diplomatic initiatives by Ecowas were unlikely to succeed.

Against this backdrop, the AU had concluded the best bet was a mediator from either the Southern or Eastern Africa because most of the West African countries had in the past been too intimately involved with the Cote d’Ivoire crisis and were therefore incapable of seeing the situation with clear eyes.

That is how Odinga’s name came up. Perhaps, the fact that he had himself been involved as a participant in a hotly contested and disputed presidential election of December 2007, worked in his favour.

The Kenyan situation was resolved by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan under a AU mandated mediation talks that took weeks.

Drama in Abidjan

Mr Odinga left the country accompanied by two aides, his first stop being a meeting with in Abuja with Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan.

From three he joined a joint four-man AU/Ecowas delegation to Abidjan to hold face-to-face meetings with Gbagbo and Ouattara.

In the delegation were presidents Verona Rodrigues Pires of Cape Verde, Boni Yayi of Benin and Ernest Bahi Koroma of Sierra Leone. James Victor Gbeho, the president of Ecowas was also in the party.

Mr Odinga’s first face- to-face engagement with Gbagbo and Ouattara was not without drama.

On arrival at Abidjan International Airport, the party was picked up and escorted to a hotel in down town Abidjan by UN Security officers.

The trip to State House to meet incumbent President Gbagbo had to be handled by security officers from President Gbagbo’s side.

It would not be the first time Mr Odinga was meeting Gbagbo. Many years ago, the two used to interact as members of the fraternity of Socialist International, a network of political parties and associations professing social democracy.

There was a time Odinga and Gbagbo were consulting over creation of an African chapter of Socialist International.

When the meeting started, the first thing Gbagbo said was to point out the claims that he had received reports that France had commenced military exercises in the North of Cote d’Ivoire at a place called Bamweko.

The mission replied that they did not have an answer even though reliable reports had it that France had already informed both the AU and Ecowas about its military moves in the North.

Gbagbo presented three arguments. First, that the Independent Electoral Commission had erred by delaying to announce the results of the elections by three days.

The arguments

Second, that the Electoral Commission had announced the results at a wrong place and third, that the way to end the stalemate is a recount of votes supervised by an international team.

Gbagbo presented to the mission a bundle of legal documents to support his position, arguing that the decision by the Constitutional Council to declare him president had the force of law.

According to a joint communique the mission put out at the conclusion of the visit, was that Gbagbo appeared to be interested in forming a grand coalition government with Ouattara, but with himself at the helm as president. Just like it happened in Kenya.

The mission’s response had three parts. First, that there would be no vote recount.

The mission argued that the two issues he had raised, namely, delay in announcing the election results by the Independent Electoral Commission and the location where the result were announced were in line with the UN Security Council Resolution 1765 in respect of the presidential elections.

Second, the mission informed Gbagbo that power sharing between him and Ouattara would not be on the agenda.

Finally, that the decision by the Constitutional Council on which he had based his arguments could not be relied on as an independent arbiter.

On his part, Mr Odinga made a special pitch to Gbagbo, recounting the experience of the political crisis in Kenya in 2007, pointing out how the crisis had reversed the fortunes of an economy that had been growing at 7 per cent of GDP before the controversial elections.

He said that since President Mwai Kibaki and himself agreed to a peaceful political settlement, the economy of Kenya was back on it’s growth path.

After three and half hours of debate, Gbagbo accepted to negotiates and bargain with Ouattara without conditions.

The mission’s meeting with Ouattara was dominated with heated exchanges especially between the prime minister of the Ouattara faction and influential player in Cote d’Ivoire politics, Guillame Soros and Rodrigues Pires of Cape Verde.

Soros accused the president of Cape Verde of approaching the Cote d’Ivoire crisis with dishonesty, telling him to his face that his foreign minister during recent visits to Angola and Brazil had openly declared support for Gbagbo.

Such was the heat in the room that at one point President Pires threatened to withdraw from the mission, arguing that with his integrity and impartiality in the mediation process having been questioned by the Ouattara group.

It took hours of persuasion and cajoling by Mr Odinga to get President Pires to remain in the mission.

Ouattara’s team complained that it was not fair to ask them to negotiate with Gbagbo considering that they were surrounded by an army blockade and were unable to leave the hotel.

Outtara’s team had not been able to spend Christmas with their families and had been receiving food supplies by helicopter.

At the end of it all, Ouattara stated his terms of engagement as follows: he was prepared to accord Gbagbo a dignified exit provided he accepts the results of the elections as declared by the Independent Electoral Commission and as certified by the United Nations.

Mr Odinga and his team then returned to State House for a second meeting with Gbagbo. During this second meeting, Gbagbo agreed to lift the blockade around Hotel Du Golf, the temporary headquarters of Ouattara.

In the presence of the members of the mission, he picked up his cellphone and ordered that the blockade be dismantled immediately.

It did not happen. Two days later, Gbagbo called members of the commission to explain that his intelligence had revealed that that there were hundreds of militia hiding with Ouattara at the Du Golf Hotel.

Labels: IVORY COAST, RAILA ODINGA

posted by MrK @ 2:45 PM