ABUJA (AFP) - African heads of state began talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja on the crisis in Ivory Coast, the divided west African country that saw a sudden escalation of violence this month.
Participants in the closed-door talks hosted by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo include Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and Mali's former president Alpha Oumar Konare, the head of the African Union Commission.
Also present were the Gabonese, Togolese and Ghanaian presidents, Omar Bongo, Gnassingbe Eyadema and John Kufuor -- who is the current head of the Economic Community of West African States -- as well as ECOWAS executive secretary Mohammed Ibn Chambas.
Mamadou Koulibaly, the speaker of Ivory Coast's National Assembly who is considered a hardliner, is representing Ivory Coast's increasingly isolated Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo at the talks.
The UN special envoy for Ivory Coast, Albert Tevoedjre, was also present for the meeting at a conference centre attached to the presidential wing of Abuja's international airport.
Blaise Compaore, the president of Burkina Faso, was expected later, Obasanjo's spokeswoman Remi Oyo told AFP. Ouagadougou has been accused of supporting the rebels in the civil war that broke out in Ivory Coast in September 2002.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Olu Adeniji told AFP the meeting aimed "to get back to dialogue and review how to further implement the ceasefire agreement."
He said representatives of the rebels holding the north of Ivory Coast, or of opposition parties, were unlikely to attend the talks.
On Saturday, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, who had been asked by the AU to mediate a peaceful solution to the latest outbreak of violence in the former French colony, said he would not attend.
Eyadema, serving as ECOWAS mediator in the crisis, was meeting with representatives of the northern rebellion when Ivorian warplanes began bombarding rebel bases on November 4, shattering an 18-month-old ceasefire.
Two days later a French peacekeeping base was hit, and nine soldiers and an American civilian were killed.
In retaliation, French forces virtually wiped out the Ivorian air force, which in turn prompted a wave of anti-European violence in the economic capital Abidjan.
Mbeki, in his bid to mediate an end to the Ivory Coast crisis, has already held talks with Gbagbo and with key Ivorian opposition figures Alassane Ouattara -- who was barred from the last presidential election because one of his parents was from Burkina Faso -- and Alphonse Djedje Mady, head of the west African country's erstwhile sole political party, the Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI).
Civil war has been simmering in Ivory Coast, once a beacon of stability in the west African region, since a rebel attempt to oust Gbagbo.
11/14/2004 - 15:19 GMT - AFP