Ivory Coast: Ouattara camp urges force to oust Gbagbo

Supporters of would-be Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara yesterday urged world powers to use military force to oust defiant strongman Laurent Gbagbo.

Mr Ouattara’s camp insisted force was the only way to dislodge Gbagbo, after the head of the World Bank said that both he and Ivory Coast’s West African neighbours had halted loans to the regime.

The new pressure on Mr Gbagbo came after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Ivory Coast faces “a real risk of a return to civil war” and France urged its large expatriate community to leave.

World Bank president Robert Zoellick said in Paris that he had agreed with the leaders of Ivory Coast’s partners in the West African Economic and Monetary union that it be cut off from international funding.

“They are also convening a meeting of ministers this week to affirm and strengthen this approach,” he said of the West Africans, after holding talks with France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Ouattara’s camp has welcomed international support, but his would-be Prime Minister, former rebel leader Guillaume Soro, had a stark message.

“After all the international pressure and the sanctions which did not have any effect on Mr Gbagbo, it’s obvious that only one solution remains, that of force,” Mr Soro told France’s i-Tele.

“I call on the United Nations Security Council, the European Union, the African Union and Ecowas to envisage using force,” he declared.

Every day now brings new international action against Mr Gbagbo. Yesterday, the European Union confirmed that visa bans had gone into effect against him and 18 close associates.

This reflects rising frustration at Mr Gbagbo’s refusal to step down in favour of his rival Mr Ouattara, who also claims to have won last month’s election and has been recognised as president by world powers.

The streets of Abidjan were lively, with traffic jams signalling the return to work for many after a month of crisis, but tensions remain high and former colonial power France urged its nationals to leave.

Many of the estimated 15,000 French expatriates have left for Christmas or to escape the mood of fear. Those who have not left should now depart “provisioally”, French government spokesman Francois Baroin said.

Germany and Sweden, with fewer citizens in Ivory Coast, followed suit.

Several other countries, including the United States, had already advised citizens to leave, and Nigeria said it was bringing out diplomats’ families after a security incident at its embassy.

Mr Gbagbo has deployed his armed forces to put down pro-Ouattara protests and to bottle up his adversary in the Golf Hotel, a luxury Abidjan resort protected by 800 UN peacekeeping troops.

“I am President of Ivory Coast. I thank the Ivorians who renewed their faith in me,” Mr Gbagbo declared late on Tuesday, in a rare televised address.

The 65-year-old strongman accused the United Nations of “making war” on his people, and insisted French and UN peacekeepers would have to leave.

He did offer a flimsy olive branch, rapidly rejected by the Ouattara camp, urging world powers to send envoys to form a panel to study the crisis.

He invited the African Union, Ecowas, West African monetary union, United Nations, Arab League, United States, European Union, Russia, China and “Ivorians of goodwill” to join the study group.

In Brussels, a senior European diplomat dismissed Mr Gbagbo’s offer as a bid to buy time and divide African leaders in a run-up to a summit of the Ecowas West African bloc in Abuja tomorrow.

United Nations human rights and peacekeeping officials have accused Mr Gbagbo’s security forces of “massive human rights abuses” and are probing reports that he has hired Liberian mercenaries as death squads.

Mr Ban issued a plea on behalf of the troops in the United Nations 9,000-strong UNOCI peacekeeping mission, in particular those dug in around the Golf Hotel in Abidjan protecting Mr Ouattara’s besieged shadow government.

He warned the UN General Assembly that a “disruption of life-support supplies for the mission and the Golf Hotel will put our peacekeepers in a critical situation in the coming days.”