South Africa’s defence chief will depart for Ivory Coast to prepare for a mediation visit by President Thabo Mbeki to halt a violent conflict between government and rebels, officials said yesterday. “The delegation will leave anytime soon to prepare for the president’s visit, which will happen hopefully in the next couple of days,” presidential spokesman Bheki Khumalo told Reuters.

A spokesman for Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said it was not yet clear when he would depart with a delegation to pave the way for a second round of mediation by Mbeki to the world’s top cocoa grower. Mbeki held talks at the weekend in Pretoria seeking to revive a power-sharing accord brokered by the former colonial power France and signed in 2003 but never fully implemented.

Khumalo said on Sunday it was “encouraging” that a second day of unscheduled talks took place with Ivory Coast Prime Minister Seydou Diarra and rebel leader Guillaume Soro. Thousands of foreigners have fled the fighting in Ivory Coast, which has drawn in French peacekeepers holding a buffer zone between government and rebels and prompted a UN arms embargo on the country. Mbeki plans to travel to the rebel stronghold of Bouake as well as Ivory Coast’s commercial capital, Abidjan, to put forward his proposals. Diarra, who is not a member of any political party and was appointed to a national reconciliation government, expressed optimism on Saturday, after three hours of talks with Mbeki.

The African Union, which gave impetus to the UN sanctions, has mandated Mbeki to look for a lasting solution to the conflict, which has its roots in ethnic divisions and has implications for all Ivory Coast’s neighbours – some of them, such as Liberia, already struggling with instability.

Mbeki has already spoken with President Laurent Gbagbo in Abidjan and with opposition leaders including former prime minister Alassane Ouattara, whose presidential ambition is at the centre of the crisis. A constitutional provision barring Ouattara from running for president because he has roots in Burkina Faso to the north angered many of his fellow northern Muslims and sowed the seeds of a coup attempt against Gbagbo.