Cracks emerged on Tuesday in African efforts to end a power struggle gripping Ivory Coast, as Uganda became the latest country to question United Nations recognition of Alassane Ouattara as its president. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said he differed from the UN line on the crisis, as a delegation of West African states prepared a US trip to lobby President Barack Obama and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to back a possible use of force to oust incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo.
The split underlines potential for disagreement at an African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa this week when the 53-nation group must decide its next steps after a disputed November 28 presidential election in the world's top cocoa grower. Major cocoa exporting companies said they had stopped registering beans for export in compliance with a call by Ouattara for a one-month ban on deliveries, the latest attempt to force Gbagbo from office by blocking his access to funds.
Breaking ranks with an AU line which so far has backed the UN in recognising Ouattara as the election winner, Museveni said the vote had to be investigated. "Uganda differs with the UN and the international community on Ivory Coast," presidential spokesman Tamale Mirundi told Uganda's Daily Monitor newspaper, quoting Museveni. "There is need for a serious approach that involves investigating the (electoral) process, including registration of voters and who voted," he said. "There should be investigations, not just declaring who has won." South African President Jacob Zuma said last week there were "discrepancies" in the way the result was announced. Angola is also seen as a potential weak point in AU unity on Ivory Coast. Ghana has said it wants to remain neutral.
That contrasts with the resolve in near neighbours to Ivory Coast, such as Nigeria and Sierra Leone, which see Gbagbo's defiance of the UN-certified result of the election as a risk to regional peace and efforts to nurture democracy. "If you don't move firmly, there's a chance you'll get more of this year. We don't want to create a bad precedent," a spokesman for Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma said, referring to nearly 20 national elections around Africa in 2011.
The spokesman said Koroma would lead a delegation of the West African regional bloc ECOWAS to Washington and the UN from Wednesday, aiming to push for a Security Council resolution backing the threat of force to oust Gbagbo. Analysts say it could be some time before military intervention is on the cards, but Nigerian Foreign Minister Odein Ajumogobia said this week Gbagbo should realise he faced "a very real prospect of overwhelming military capability".
An Abidjan-based diplomat said the ECOWAS visit to New York and Washington was part of a push for political, and possibly logistical and financial support for an intervention, but warned that maintaining AU unity would be vital to the cause. Tara O'Connor at Africa Risk Consulting said the stance of some nations on the crisis would be determined by concern over their business interests in Ivory Coast, which before a 2002-2003 civil war was a star economic performer.
"The longer it goes on, the more likely cracks will appear (in AU unity) and for all the wrong reasons," she forecast. Allies of Gbagbo, who insists the UN-certified results were rigged, have shrugged off the warnings of military force and efforts of the United States, European Union and others to starve him of funds to pay civil servants and the army.
But there was evidence of those measures biting on Tuesday as industry sources said six cocoa exporting houses - whose purchases amount to the majority of the annual 1.2-million-tonne crop - had stopped registering beans for export. Last weekend Ouattara's camp appealed for a one month suspension of cocoa deliveries to world markets to deprive Gbagbo of tax revenues from a sector which yields an estimated $1 billion a year. "We are buying but we are not registering with the BCC (regulatory body)," a senior official in one of the firms said of the standard process required before cocoa can be exported. Although the crisis has pushed cocoa future prices close to 30-year highs on fears of future supply disruption, so far the chocolate industry is taking it in its stride.
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