Canada urges UN sanctions against Gbagbo regime

Canada is threatening the Ivory Coast with sanctions, a tactic many believe could actually work to defuse the dangerous political showdown there if the United Nations could muster a global clampdown.

Right now, it's a country with two presidents. One, incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, refuses to admit he lost an election, and most of the world is demanding he cede power. The other, election winner Alassane Ouattara, is holed up in an Abidjan hotel surrounded by 800 UN peacekeepers effectively serving as his bodyguard.

Now two clocks are ticking: the speed with which the world can heap pressure on Mr. Gbagbo to leave, and the stamina of the UN to stay in, and guard Mr. Ouattara, until that happens.

The race could decide whether the country splits into civil war and has implications for UN peacekeeping, the price of chocolate, and a Canadian oil company.

It's turning into an international showdown: Mr. Gbagbo wants UN peacekeepers to leave, but the world doesn't recognize him as president. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon instead called on countries to support besieged peacekeepers, arguing the UN's legitimacy is at stake. On Wednesday, the United States said it's talking to countries, mostly in Africa, about expanding the peacekeeping mission.

How willing African countries will be to send troops is unclear, but war-weary Western nations such as Canada will be reluctant. But international sanctions, often seemingly futile, might be persuasive in the Ivory Coast.

Canada wants the UN to impose new sanctions on Mr. Gbagbo's regime, and is working with other countries, including UN Security Council members, “to determine how best to achieve the desired result of pressuring Laurent Gbagbo to cede power,” said Melissa Lantsman, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon. The real hope is putting together sanctions that could cut away the domestic support Mr. Gbagbo needs to stay in power. If his funds dry up, he won't be able to pay government officials, and crucially, the army.

The election crisis is often seen as part of an intractable north-south split in the country, with Mr. Ouattara from the Muslim north, and Mr. Gbagbo from the Christian south.

But it is, according to experts, less clear cut: many Muslims live in the south, and Mr. Gbagbo doesn't have monolithic backing of Christians or others there. The country has suffered under his regime. Some think he doesn't have deep enough political support to stay if he doesn't control the levers of power by paying the salaries of civil servants and soldiers and keeping state radio and TV running.

“He would have to keep three or four of these balls in the air in order to hang on to power,” said Michael McGovern, a Yale University expert on the Ivory Coast. “The army is the key.”

The trick is to quickly fashion sanctions that could persuade backers he can't hang on.

The United States and the European Union have imposed travel bans on Mr. Gbagbo and some associates, but it's mostly symbolic. The World Bank froze loans to the country on Wednesday. A more debilitating move has been suggested: having the West African central bank, which controls the money supply in eight countries, freeze Ivory Coast accounts.

The UN Security Council can approve broad economic sanctions to freeze assets or restrict trade. That's also the easiest route for Canadian sanctions, because our laws make it easy to adopt UN measures; the law to impose unilateral sanctions has several legal tests and takes longer – and global sanctions have more impact.

Tough UN sanctions could restrict sales of the country's big cash crop, cocoa. Aside from making the price of chocolate rise, it would hit the country's economy and population hard. But one of the regime's major sources of funds now is oil. “Gbagbo has very good control of the receipts that come out of that,” Mr. McGovern said. That's where Canada, with small trade and aid ties with the Ivory Coast, has an interest at stake.

A Calgary-based oil company, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., operates the Espoir oil field in Ivoirien waters, pumping out 30,000 barrels a day, and the Ivory Coast's national oil company, PETROCI, owns a 20-per-cent stake. International sanctions to really cut off Mr. Gbagbo's flow of funds would probably have to cut the flow of oil profits, and hit a Canadian firm, too, perhaps by banning Ivoirien oil sales or the supply of equipment for operating rigs. (The company declined to comment.)

There are skeptics about whether sanctions are effective. They have to be “smart sanctions” that hit the government without devastating citizens. Governments can find illicit ways around some of them, or endure them. But in Mr. Gbagbo's case, the threat of cutting off the payroll could convince those who keep him in power that they're backing the wrong horse.

From http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-urges-un-sanctions-against-gbagbo-regime/article1847913/