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| Monday, 08 November 2004 |
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UN, France demand Gbabgo end Ivory Coast violence ABIDJAN, Sunday (Reuters) The United Nations and France demanded on Sunday that President Laurent Gbagbo end fighting in Ivory Coast after his forces killed nine French peacekeepers in a bombing raid on a rebel-held town. France hit back by destroying most of the West African country's small air force and the former colonial power also threatened to press for a U.N. Security Council arms embargo and other sanctions. Ivorian officials said Gbagbo, elected four years ago in disputed polls, was coming under pressure from France to quit. "It's out of the question," said national assembly speaker Mamadou Koulibaly. "We are going towards a big civil war, an uprising like we have probably never seen before in Africa. I can't see how (French President Jacques) Chirac will triumph." Gbagbo's forces last week shattered an 18-month truce with rebels who hold the northern half of the world's biggest cocoa grower by launching three days of air strikes and sending soldiers into a neutral buffer zone. At an emergency session on Saturday, the U.N. Security Council gave the 10,000 French and other international peacekeepers a green light to use "all necessary means" to stop the fighting. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan phoned Gbagbo twice to urge him to end the violence, which also threatens stability in West Africa where several other states have been plagued by conflicts in the past decade or so. Meanwhile.loud explosions rocked Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan on Sunday and heavy gunfire could be heard as thousands of anti-French demonstrators marched towards a French military base. A witness said a French military helicopter fired warning shots into a lagoon crossed by two bridges that lead from the city centre towards the French base and the airport. Red tracer bullets streaked across the night sky, coming from the residential district of Cocody in the commercial capital of the world's top cocoa grower. France had warned Gbagbo last week not to resume hostilities and was furious at the killing of its nine peacekeepers. Twenty-three other French soldiers were wounded in the bombing raid on the rebel-held town of Bouake. On Chirac's orders, two Ivorian Sukhoi 25 fighters and three helicopters were blown up in the capital Yamoussoukro. France has been caught in the middle of the conflict in Ivory Coast ever since rebels seized the north after a failed attempt to oust Gbagbo in September 2002. Thousands of people were killed in fighting before a truce was agreed in May 2003. |
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