There is confusion over whether the Central African Republic’s President Michel Djotodia is preparing to step down after weeks of escalating violence that has claimed more than a thousand lives.  Djotodia is the Muslim rebel who deposed former president Francois Bozize in a coup last March.

Djotodia will meet with regional African leaders on Thursday to resolve the turmoil that has swept the CAR during his disastrous 10 months in office.  The Al Jazeera News Network is reporting that he will resign.  Other outlets say officials are denying that report.

But the loosely knit band of rebel groups that swept Djotodia into power have come apart; they are fighting each other as well as the new citizen militias from the CAR’s Christian majority which resented the brutality of the coup.

“Now, he has no constituency,” said J. Peter Pham, Africa Center director of the Atlantic Council of Djotodia’s vanishing support base.  “He is actually an obstacle to any progress toward a new transition to a possibility of reconciliation in the country.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations is warning that the CAR is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis as internal conflict refugees flee to overcrowded camps with poor sanitation.  There is a measles outbreak around the capital Bangui.