Hopes were rising today that peace talks under way in Paris might end Ivory Coast's four-month war, even as the rebels and the government laid on the pressure with rival demonstrations.
The negotiations, brokered by former colonial power France, have been going on since last Wednesday behind closed doors at a national rugby training centre in this town 35 kilometres (20 miles) south of the French capital.
They are aimed at sealing a long-term accord that would be ratified by a meeting of African heads of state in Paris January 25-26th in the presence of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. For Ivory Coast, where three rebel groups control the north and west while loyalist forces defend the south, the talks are seen as a last chance to douse the violence that has shattered the west African country's former reputation as a haven of prosperity.
A ceasefire has been effect on the ground as the various delegations to the talks - the rebels, the government and the main opposition parties - wrestle with the two central issues fuelling the conflict: criteria used to determine Ivorian nationality and the rebels' call for early elections.
Modelled on the Dayton talks that brought an accord for the former Yugoslavia in 1995, the representatives in Marcoussis have been deliberating, eating and sleeping in the rugby centre, entirely cut off from the outside. Even mobile telephones have been permanently switched off.
The main rebel group, the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast (MPCI), has called for a "gigantic" anti-government demonstration in Abidjan, the economic capital in the south of the west African country, on Wednesday and for a series of further protests to demand the resignation of President Laurent Gbagbo.
Yesterday, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in separate rallies for and against Mr Gbagbo. Mr Gbagbo is not attending the Marcoussis talks, where rebels and the political opposition have called on him to stand down and make way for early elections.
AFP