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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| Leaders Endorses Ivory Coast Sanctions |
| 2004-11-14 |
| African leaders supported an arms embargo and other U.N. sanctions on the Ivory Coast government and rebels when they met in Nigeria to discuss the current violence. Ivory Coast's president, blamed by France for violence against foreigners and on guard against feared attempts by Paris to overthrow him, holed up in his lagoon-side mansion Sunday and skipped the African summit in Nigeria on ending his country's crisis. Earlier this month, the U.N. Security Council supported sanctions if the government and rebels did not return to a peace process by the beginning of December. Foreigners jammed the airport to flee the West African country despite the return of calm. President Laurent Gbagbo also promoted the hard-line commander whose forces launched a deadly airstrike on French peacekeepers that set off the confrontation, making Col. Maj. Philippe Mangou head of the country's armed forces in a move likely to anger France and much of Gbagbo's own army. As a French-led evacuation builds to one of Africa's largest exodus of foreigners, French President Jacques Chirac denounced Gbagbo's "questionable regime" and said France, Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler, would not tolerate much more. "We do not want to allow a system to develop that would lead only to anarchy or a regime of a fascist nature," Chirac told an audience in the southern French city of Marseille. French and Ivorian troops manned Abidjan's international airport, where scores of French families and other foreigners milled with children and luggage awaiting flights out. A handful of heavily armed U.S. Marines stood ready to assist French troops. |
| Posted by:Fred |