C. African Republic leader faces rebel threat

A bushmeat seller, left, who declined to give her name, talks about how she and others in her neighborhood plan to remain there despite the increasingly fraught situation, as she sits by her wares at the market in the Bimbo neighborhood of the capital Bangui, Central African Republic, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. President Francois Bozize's government is coming under growing threat as rebels vowing to overthrow him rejected appeals from the African Union to hold their advance and try to form a coalition government. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

A bushmeat seller, left, who declined to give her name, talks about how she and others in her neighborhood plan to remain there despite the increasingly fraught situation, as she sits by her wares at the market in the Bimbo neighborhood of the capital Bangui, Central African Republic, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. President Francois Bozize's government is coming under growing threat as rebels vowing to overthrow him rejected appeals from the African Union to hold their advance and try to form a coalition government. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

A churchgoer raises her hands as she prays for peace in the New Year's Day morning mass at the Notre Dame Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Bangui, Central African Republic, Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2013. President Francois Bozize's government is coming under growing threat as rebels vowing to overthrow him rejected appeals from the African Union to hold their advance and try to form a coalition government. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) ? After troops under Francois Bozize seized the capital of Central African Republic in 2003 amid volleys of machine-gun and mortar fire, he dissolved the constitution and parliament. Now a decade later it is Bozize who himself could be ousted from power with rebels having seized more than half the country and made their way to the doorstep of the capital in less than a month.

In a bid to avoid being overthrown, he's promising to form a coalition government with rebels and to negotiate without conditions. It's a sign of how serious a threat is now being posed by the rebel groups who call themselves Seleka, which means alliance in the local Sango language.

But Bozize says there's one point not up for negotiation: him leaving office before his term ends in 2016.

"We can't destroy the country. I don't think that a transition is a good solution for the rebels, for Central African Republic or for the international community," said Cyriaque Gonda, a spokesman for the political coalition behind Bozize.

But mediators for the government and others note the rebels ? an alphabet soup of acronyms in French, UFDR, CPJP, FDPC and CPSK ? want Bozize gone. And that's the only issue the disparate group seem unified on. Seleka is a shaky alliance that lumps together former enemies.

In September 2011, fighting between the CPJP and the UFDR left at least 50 people dead in the town of Bria and more than 700 homes destroyed.

"Even if they show unity in the military action, we know that they are politically very disunited, the only thing that holds them together is the opposition to the current president," said Roland Marchal, a Paris-based expert on Central African Republic. "If they take control of the capital I think that divisions would appear quickly."

Gonda, who has negotiated on behalf of the government with the rebels, says some of them couldn't even accept sitting together as recently as 2008.

Bozize, who seized power while the democratically elected president was traveling outside the country. managed to win elections in 2005 but in the years since he has faced multiple low-level rebellions that have shattered security across the norther part of this large but desperately poor country. He won the 2011 election with more than 64 percent of the vote, though the U.S. says the voting was "widely viewed as severely flawed."

The most prominent among the rebels groups in Seleka is the UFDR, or Union of Democratic Forces for Unity.

Human Rights Watch, which has documented abuses by both government forces and rebel groups operating in the country's north, says the UFDR rebellion "has its roots in the deep marginalization of northeastern CAR, which is virtually cut off from the rest of the country and is almost completely undeveloped."

The rebels, though, also have included some of Bozize's former fighters who helped bring him to power in 2003 but later accused him of failing to properly pay them, among other grievances, Human Rights Watch says.

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Associated Press writer Oleg Cetinic in Paris contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-01-02-Central%20African%20Republic/id-bbbeb7c8031b45dcbf2dc96c27e95a5a

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