Abidjan - Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo and opposition party officials were to resume their attempts to revive a moribund reconciliation process in the troubled African cocoa giant on Wednesday, after completing their first day of talks in three fraught months.
The talks to revive a moribund French-brokered peace pact, signed in January last year, opened on Tuesday with Gbagbo and his Prime Minister Seydou Diarra sitting opposite representatives from four opposition parties.
The peace process was suspended after opposition ministers boycotted cabinet meetings to protest against a deadly state-sanctioned crackdown on a pro-peace rally in March which left at least 120 dead according to a United Nations human rights team. The peace pact is aimed at healing the wounds of an armed rebellion in September 2002.
Key demands from the loosely-aligned opposition coalition known as the G7 are the reinstatement of three ministers sacked by the president in the wake of the walkout.
They also want security guarantees amid new tensions Abidjan following incursions by both sides into the ceasefire zone slashed across the centre of the country.
The ruling party insists that the rebels disarm before the implementation of the peace pact, which addresses key catalysts of the war including land ownership and national identity.
While the G7 parties are attending the talks, three rebel groups are boycotting the discussions, arguing that Gbagbo himself is part of the problem.
Calling the president a "dilettante" responsible for the Ivory Coast impasse, the rebels announced their boycott Monday, saying they refuse to sit down with Gbagbo without mediation by the United Nations.
Tuesday's talks, split into two parts, aimed to revive to reunite the rebel-held north and the ferociously partisan south after the failed coup against Gbagbo plunged the country into war.
Top of the agenda was the restoration of normal government function,
The talks come barely a week after a UN Security Council delegation travelled to Abidjan bearing a stern message for the main protagonists in the crisis that has pummelled an economy which had been a motor for the west African economy.
Should there be no tangible progress towards reconciliation and the outbursts of violence continue, Ivory Coast could be hit with targeted sanctions, diplomats said, including travel bans and the freezing of bank accounts.
In Libreville, the office of Gabon's President Omar Bongo Ondimba said he would meet this week with the Ivorian opposition parties, including members of the rebel New Forces, after holding talks Tuesday with a delegation from Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front.
Bongo met with Gbagbo last week in the Gabonese capital as part of efforts to revive the peace process.
UN peacekeepers have been deployed in Ivory Coast since April and have been seen by Gbagbo partisans as favouring the rebels and the opposition. A UN spokesperson said on Tuesday that the request for intervention in the talks process had been declined.
Little emerged from Tuesday's sessions, though it seemed unlikely that much progress would be made despite the stated intentions from all sides prior to the opening of discussions.
"(The opposition) told President Gbagbo that it was up to him to act, as a show of faith so that government function would be restored," a source close to the talks said.
"Laurent Gbagbo said he has already done a lot."
Regional leaders fear that continued unrest in Ivory Coast could bleed over its porous borders, reigniting conflict in next-door Liberia, itself emerging from 14 years of war, or destabilising northwestern neighbour Guinea.
While Ghana, to the east, has reaped some benefits from Ivory Coast's struggle - including higher traffic at its expanding Tema port - President John Kufuor has been key to regional mediation efforts under the aegis of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which he currently leads.
The Ghanaian capital Accra is to host a third summit of Ivorian political actors in coming days, local media reported, with Kufuor and Gabonese President Omar Bongo, considered a key Gbagbo ally, mediating.