BANGUI: Rebels in the Central African Republic vowed yesterday to take the last key town before the capital and renewed their call for the president to stand down, voicing scepticism over his pledge to make concessions.
Rebel coalition Seleka, which has seized much of the country in a three-week advance to within 160km of the capital Bangui, said its renewed call for President Francois Bozize to leave power was in response to an advance by government troops toward rebel positions. “Bozize must go, it’s clear. We are demanding his exit, that he step down,” said rebel spokesman Eric Massi.
“A column of eight vehicles has left Damara to attack our positions in Sibut,” about 100km to the northeast of the key town, he added. “We are going to neutralise that column as we always do, and we are going to secure Damara.”
After talks in Bangui on Sunday with Bozize, African Union chief Thomas Boni Yayi had said the former general was ready to negotiate with the rebels in Gabon and to form a government of national unity in the resource-rich country with a long history of instability.
He also said the president had pledged not stand for office when his current term expires in 2016, after speculation that he would try to modify the constitution to be able to run for re-election. But both the rebels and the political opposition said that they did not believe Bozize’s promises.
“There is no longer any doubt that the sincerity of the promises made by Francois Bozize is not real,” Massi said. Seleka, which has carried out a southward offensive from near the border with Chad, also accused Bozize’s regime of persecuting political foes and urged multinational African peacekeeping force FOMAC to take action to stop atrocities.
“We call on the African peacekeeping forces to intervene immediately in the capital to stop the abuses and murders of prisoners, or see that they don’t prevent us from doing so,” Massi said. He made no mention of Bozize’s offer of talks, while the president did not respond to a ceasefire offer by the rebels.
Leading opposition figure Martin Ziguele — who was prime minister under Ange-Felix Patasse, the president Bozize toppled in a 2003 coup — also said he had little faith in Bozize’s pledges.
“The problem is Bozize’s promises. He makes promises and doesn’t keep them,” Ziguele said, accusing the president of having a “credibility problem”.
Seleka began its insurgency on December 10 on the grounds that Bozize’s government had failed to abide by the terms of peace accords signed with various rebel groups in 2007 and 2011, which provided for disarmament and funding the reintegration of former rebels into society.
The rebels have taken several major towns, including the diamond-mining hub of Bria. French President Francois Hollande spoke yesterday with Bozize by telephone and called for talks with the rebels, his office said.
Hollande said the former French colony should hold “a dialogue between the Centrafrican authorities and all parties present, notably the rebellion”, the French presidency said in a statement.
Bozize has appealed for help from France, which propped up previous regimes in the chronically unstable country of five million people, but Paris has refused to intervene.
Central Bangui was lively on Monday, as workers in both the public and private sectors queued outside banks to get their monthly pay. Troops were deployed in force in the city for the first time since the crisis began.
A civil servant who earns 80,000 CFA francs a month expressed concern over the conflict. “What we earn is insignificant. The salary is slim and the cost of living is high. Prices have risen. All this hits us hard. I’m more afraid of famine for my children than of rebels.”
Afp
