Tough Woman Mediator Elected Central Africa President

Catherine Samba Panza, who was sworn in Thursday as interim president of the crisis-wracked Central African Republic, has both a reputation for toughness and experience of bringing foes together through dialogue.

Among eight candidates, the transitional parliament voted decisively for the 59-year-old mayor of Bangui to take charge of a nation that has plunged into inter-religious strife that touched off a major humanitarian crisis.

Samba Panza, the first woman leader of the poor, landlocked nation of 4.6 million people, has looked on appalled as her country plunged into murderous chaos and its state machinery collapsed.

The slaughter began after her predecessor, Michel Djotodia, seized power in a coup last March backed by the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels, who launched attacks on the majority Christian community prompting the formation of vigilante groups to fight back.

Regional African leaders forced Djotodia to quit on January 10 because of his inability to halt fighting and atrocities by both sides, which have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Both at city hall and after her election Monday, the businesswoman-turned-politician urged Seleka fighters and Christian vigilantes to talk, receiving delegations from both sides.

Samba-Panza has said her priorities are restoring security and "putting people to work" as quickly as possible.

"I have measured the expectations the people have of me," she told the press Tuesday. "I tell myself that I can absolutely not disappoint these expectations."

Married with three children, Samba Panza is a Christian, but makes no issue of her religious faith. Her background illustrates the diversity of the Central African population, which has weathered successive coups d'etat, army mutinies and civil disturbances, but never before seen religious strife.

The new head of state was born on June 26, 1954, in neighboring Chad of a Central African mother and a Cameroonian father. She studied corporate law in the Central African capital Bangui and then in Paris.

When she returned to the CAR, she founded a firm of insurance brokers, to find that doing business and attracting investment were made difficult by the prevailing climate of graft. People close to her say that she derived a deep-rooted "hostility to corruption" from her experiences.

She entered politics in 2003 after then president Ange-Felix Patasse was overthrown in a coup by Francois Bozize -- himself ousted last March by Djotodia.

At the time Bozize made her the vice president of a national reconciliation conference.

She made her mark in that post by reconciling former president David Dacko (ousted in a 1981 coup) and his sworn enemy since independence, then prime minister Abel Goumba.

The unexpected achievement put the spotlight on the future leader, drawing her to the attention of Djotodia who named her mayor of Bangui after his rebels seized power.

Samba Panza comes across as a gentle, affable woman with a ready smile, but those who know her in Bangui caution that she is "very exacting" in her work and life and "does not readily bend to authority."

"She's somebody who comes from the private sector, who works hard," a Western source in the city said, adding that "with her, we shall really have an opportunity to get things done."

Alongside her professional career, Samba Panza has been an activist member of the Association of Women Jurists in Central Africa. She fought to promote the presence of women in highly qualified jobs and also took up the civil rights of victims of violence in successive upheavals since independence from France in 1960.