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West African leaders meet on Ivory Coast crisis

25 December 2010 04:06 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. West African leaders met in Nigeria on Friday to discuss options for Ivory Coast, where an election standoff has killed up to 200 and threatens to tip the country back into civil war, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
World powers and African states have heaped political and financial pressure on incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo to step down after the November 28 poll, in which electoral commission results showed he lost by 8 points to rival Alassane Ouattara.
"At this meeting (heads of state) will be deciding what more we can do to help the situation in the Ivory Coast," a spokesman for West African regional bloc ECOWAS told Reuters as the meeting started in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
Newspapers in Ivory Coast’s main city Abidjan on Thursday speculated the regional body would consider sending an intervention force after a top Ouattara aide said force was the "only solution" to oust Gbagbo.
The United States and the European Union have imposed travel sanctions on Gbagbo and his inner circle while the World Bank and the West African central bank have cut off his funding in an attempt to pressure him to step down.
But Gbagbo has shown no sign of caving and insists he won the election after the Constitutional Court, which is headed by one of his allies, threw out hundreds of thousands of votes from pro-Ouattara constituencies.
The standoff turned violent last week after gun battles broke out briefly between government soldiers loyal to Gbagbo and rebels who now back Ouattara.
Residents of pro-Ouattara neighborhoods have said masked gunmen are now breaking into homes by night, kidnapping and in some cases killing people.
A statement issued by the U.N. mission in Ivory Coast on Thursday said that masked supporters of Gbagbo armed with rocket launchers have been blocking a road to Anyama, around N’Dotre, which it said is "a village outside Abidjan where allegations point to existence of a mass grave."
The U.N. Human Right Council issued a declaration of condemnation on the human rights violations and called for reconciliation to prevent civil war.
The standoff between the two presidential claimants has caused the deaths of more than 170 people, according to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which condemned what it said was evidence of human rights violations.
MONEY CRUNCH
Gbagbo faces a cash crunch that could make it hard for him to continue paying the wages of soldiers who back him, after the West African regional central bank cut his access to funds.
Ministers from the Central Bank of the West African Economic and Monetary Union said late on Thursday that the bank would no longer recognize Gbagbo’s authority as president, and that access to funds would only be given to Ouattara’s "legitimate government."
The move follows a World Bank decision on Wednesday to freeze some $800 million in committed financing, adding to expectations that Gbagbo may soon struggle to pay wages -- including to troops.
Military support for Gbagbo is seen as one of the main reasons he is able to defy calls to step down.
Gbagbo’s Finance Minister Desire Dalo did not comment when reached by telephone late on Thursday. A spokesman for Ouattara’s government said the decision by the central bank was "a very important move toward controlling the economic power."
Ivory Coast’s $2.3 billion bond due 2032 fell to a record low on Thursday as investors worried that the country would be unable to meet a $30 million bond payment on December 31.
Turmoil in the world’s top cocoa-producing country has also boosted cocoa prices to recent four-month highs, disrupting export registrations and raising the possibility that fighting could block transport and shipping.
The crisis was also taking its toll on gold mining operations in Ivory Coast. Mining company Randgold Resources saw its shares fall sharply in London after it announced that production at its Tongon mine would be adversely affected.
RISK OF WAR
Charles Ble Goude, leader of the powerful pro-Gbagbo "Young Patriots" movement, warned that sending a military force could lead to renewed war in Ivory Coast, still divided from a 2002-03 civil war.
"In a union such as ECOWAS, when one country is in difficulties, you don’t come and start a war in that country, but try to help find a solution. I don’t know what would be the objective of an intervention force. Kill Ivorians?," Ble Goude said in an interview on RFI radio.
In New York, the 192-nation U.N. General Assembly recognized Ouattara by unanimously deciding that the list of diplomats he submitted to the world body be recognized as the sole official representatives of Ivory Coast at the United Nations.
Thursday’s move will strengthen Ouattara’s claim to be the legitimate leader of Ivory Coast and deepen the isolation of Gbagbo, who has few supporters across the international community, U.N. diplomats told Reuters.
The United States, the United Nations, the European Union, the African Union and ECOWAS have all recognised provisional electoral commission results showing Ouattara as the winner, with Washington and Brussels issuing sanctions on Gbagbo and his inner circle.
Tensions in the former French colony led France this week to ask its 13,000 citizens in the country to leave.
The Dutch Defense Ministry said on Friday it was sending a warship to Ivory Coast which could be used to help evacuate European expatriates if violence escalates.