VZCZCXYZ0000
OO RUEHWEB

DE RUEHDK #0286 0530928
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O R 220926Z FEB 10
FM AMEMBASSY DAKAR
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0112
INFO RUEHDK/AMEMBASSY DAKAR

UNCLAS DAKAR 000286 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL SG XY NG ECOWAS
SUBJECT: SENEGAL'S ROLE AS MEDIATOR IN NIGER 
 
¶1.  (SBU) PolCouns met with  Mamadour Ndiaye, Chief of Staff of the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Ambassador Mamadou Sow, 
senior adviser to the Foreign Minister, and Mouhamadou Sarr, head 
of the MFA's America and Oceania Division, to discuss Senegal's 
role as a mediator in Niger.  Ndiaye noted that the heads of state 
of the member countries of the Economic Community of West Africa 
(ECOWAS) had selected Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade to serve 
as mediator before the coup d'etat.  He reported that Minister of 
State for Foreign Affairs Madicke Niang was en route for Niamey 
when the coup happened.  As a result, the Foreign Minister never 
arrived in Niger, only getting so far as Ouagadougou.  Given the 
new situation, Ndiaye said it was impossible to know at this time 
what the members of ECOWAS would decide regarding how to manage the 
crisis in Niger.  He emphasized that Wade had been selected to 
mediate between a sitting president and the opposition; he was not 
empowered to mediate between a military junta and a deposed 
president.  With this in mind, Ndiaye stressed that Senegal would 
follow the will of the African Union (AU) and ECOWAS regarding how 
to proceed from this point on, underscoring this point by noting 
that the GOS has officially condemned the attempted coup d'etat 
echoing the position of the AU.  Ndiaye undertook to get in touch 
with the Embassy at some point next week to further discuss Niger 
and Senegal's role after the situation had become more clear.  He 
went on to say, given that there is an American embassy in Niamey, 
the GOS would appreciate any information the United States could 
provide regarding the evolving situation in Niger. 
 
 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Poulcouns spoke with his French counterpart, Laurent 
Chevalier, regarding Senegal's role as a mediator.  While noting 
that it is much too early to make any definitive judgments, 
Chevalier expressed doubts regarding Senegal's ability to be an 
effective negotiator in Niger (as opposed to Mauritania) noting 
that Senegal does not have the same historic ties to Niger that it 
has with Mauritania.  That said he acknowledged that Senegal would 
not be acting more or less unilaterally as it did in Mauritania. 
Instead, Wade would be acting at the behest of and with the support 
of ECOWAS and ostensibly the AU and one would imagine the major 
donor countries, which should give him the legitimacy he would need 
to succeed. 
 
 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Comment: President Wade sees himself as an international 
statesman of the first order and lives for being put in charge of 
managing this type of crisis.  He is a serial conflict mediator (or 
would-be mediator) and has told numerous interlocutors that he 
believes he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.  Since becoming 
president, Wade has mediated or attempted to get involved in the 
mediation of conflicts and crises in Mauritania, Guinea, a 
Chad/Sudan border conflict, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, the 
Israeli/Palestinian conflict, United States/Iran.  While it is true 
that Wade was selected by ECOWAS to mediate between the opposition 
and a sitting president and not the junta and the deposed 
president, there is a strong probability he will use his previous 
assignment as a basis for a new one focused on restoring a return 
to constitutional order in Niger.  It is important to note, given 
the reaction of Senegal to recent coups d'etat in Mauritania and 
Guinea, that Senegal is not likely to be overly insistent on 
returning President Mamadou Tandja to power.  Instead, the 
Senegalese are likely to take a practical rather than a principled 
approach and focus more on quickly reestablishing stability and 
constitutional order even if "democracy" -- in the form of 
democratically elected president not being returned to power -- 
suffers in the process.  That said Wade is an agile politician who 
will not want to lose face or political capital to a losing 
proposition.  If any future negotiations were to bog down, Wade is 
likely to quickly divest himself of ownership of the crisis.  To 
wit, he attempted to do just that when negotiations between the 
presidents of Chad and Sudan began to break down during talks he 
mediated on the margins of the last  Summit of the Organization of 
the Islamic Conference (OIC), which Senegal hosted in 2008.  In 
that case, when it seemed that the talks would fail, Wade announced 
at the 11th hour that he had never really want to be the 
facilitator.  United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon had to 
stiffen Wade's spine and push him to finish what he started. 
Finally, assuming that Senegal is placed in the lead to help 
mediate a solution to the crisis in Niger, it is unclear if the 
Foreign Minister, Niang, will be as skilled a mediator as his 
predecessor Cheikh Tidiane Gadio.  End comment. 
SMITH