Temporary ceasefire agreed with CAR rebels

LIBREVILLE, Gabon: The different parties in the Central African Republic’s crisis who have been meeting in Libreville for peace talks since Wednesday, will sign a ceasefire agreement in the next one week to retain President Francois Bozize in power, a source close to the negotiators in Libreville told Xinhua yesterday.“We shall agree in principle to a ceasefire within one week to relieve the pain of our people who have suffered for a long time,” the spokesman for the coalition of rebels known as Seleka, Col. Florian N’djadder-Bedaya, said. N’djadder-Bedaya also said Seleka would like to retain authority in the towns that have already been conquered since the outbreak of the rebel offensive on December 10, 2012. “That will put pressure on Bozize,” he said. However, Cyriaque Gonda, CAR’s minister of state, who is negotiating on behalf of Bozize’s government, says they are on the verge of reaching a ceasefire agreement. The official government delegation, which was angry the whole of Wednesday, appeared relaxed during the negotiations yesterday. “We have decided to pursue a political solution to end the crisis,” Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso said. On Wednesday, the talks among the parties were deadlocked because of the intransigence of the rebellion and the opposition, who demanded Bozize’s resignation and transfer to the International Criminal Court for crimes allegedly committed by his regime. He was speaking in Libreville during the opening of a summit of the presidents of the Economic Community of Central African States on the Central African Republic’s crisis. In a press briefing yesterday, opposition politician Jean-Jacques Demafouth said Seleka, the unarmed opposition, civil society and the CAR government are on the verge of reaching a political consensus, which maintain the CAR president Bozize in office until the end of his term in 2016.