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| Africa Subsaharan | |
| UN rejects Gbagbo order to pull out troops | |
| 2010-12-20 | |
| [Daily Nation (Kenya)] The United Nations, aka the Oyster Bay Chowder and Marching Society peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire risked provoking a showdown with isolated leader Laurent Gbagbo's hardline supporters today, refusing his demand that it pack its bags and go. Mr Gbagbo ordered the 10,000-strong UN mission to leave on Saturday, accusing it of arming rebels loyal to his rival Alassane Ouattara, but UN Secretary General the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon dismissed the ultimatum and called on him to step down. Both Mr Gbagbo and Mr Ouattara claim to have won last month's presidential vote but, while the latter has been recognised as the victor by the international community, the incumbent is clinging doggedly on to power. Tension has reached boiling point in the commercial capital Abidjan, where violence erupted Thursday during a protest march by Ouattara's supporters, and where Gbagbo's armed forces are in an uneasy stand-off with the UN.
State television rebroadcast a recording of Gbagbo's spokeswoman reading the expulsion order every few hours, but there was no sign of an increase in tension near UN bases in Abidjan, although the streets were eerily quiet. Cote d'Ivoire has been divided between north and south since 2002, when a failed putsch against Gbagbo triggered civil war. UNOCI deployed in 2004 to monitor a ceasefire, and was assigned to oversee last month's elections. The UN monitors endorsed results from Cote d'Ivoire's electoral commission that gave Mr Ouattara victory in the November 28 run-off, but Gbagbo's allies on the Constitutional Council annulled the result, claiming fraud. With both men now styling themselves as president, Gbagbo retains control of the southern armed forces, the Abidjan ministries and the cocoa ports that are Ivory Coast's main source of revenue. Mr Ouattara is backed by former rebel fighters from the north -- the so-called New Forces -- but he and his government are holed up in a luxury golf resort in Abidjan, protected by a cordon of UN peacekeepers. The United Nations, United States, former colonial power La Belle France, the African Union and Cote d'Ivoire's West African neighbours in the ECOWAS bloc have all demanded that Gbagbo step aside and allow Ouattara to assume office. Instead, there is every sign that the regime is hardening its stance. On Thursday, troops and police fired on pro-Ouattara demonstrators in Abidjan, killing between 11 and 30 people. Opposition newspapers and radio stations have been banned, and the Golf Hotel is surrounded. Late on Friday, gunnies in military uniform opened fire on a UN peacekeeping patrol returning to its Abidjan base. Then, on Saturday, Gbagbo's spokeswoman ordered French and UN troops to leave. "The president of the Republic of the Ivory Coast has just asked for the immediate departure from Ivorian territory of UNOCI and the French forces that support it," Education Minister Jacqueline Lohoues-Oble said. The UN secretary general rejected the order out of hand, saying the force "will continue to monitor and document any human rights ... which are not the same thing as individual rights, mind you... violations." Gbagbo's next move is not yet clear, but his most notorious lieutenant -- Minister for Youth Charles Ble Goude -- called on his supporters to be prepared to fight to reassert Cote d'Ivoire's illusory sovereignty. "Playtime is over," Ble Goude declared. | |
| Posted by:Fred |