Ivory Coast military blockade still in place, says Ouattara camp

Wed, 05 Jan 2011

Nairobi/Abidjan - Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo has broken his promise to African mediators to lift a military blockade around the hotel where his rival Alassane Ouattara is holed up, a spokesman for Ouattara said Wednesday.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and three West African heads of state met Gbagbo in the economic capital Abidjan on Monday, and said they extracted a promise from the defiant leader to enter into talks and remove the barricades.

"Mr Gbagbo has kept his word on the blockade, which he lifted at around midday yesterday," Odinga said in a statement released Wednesday after his return to Kenya.

However, Patrick Achi, spokesman for Ouattara's alternative government, said the blockade was still there as of Wednesday morning.

"They (the barricades) have not been removed ... and we think they will stay," he told the German Press Agency dpa. "We think this is a maneuver to buy time since the heads of state were there, but I'm sure it wasn't in their minds to move it."

Gbagbo has resisted fierce international pressure to hand over power to Ouattara - the man the world recognizes as Ivory Coast's rightful president - in a standoff the UN says has claimed at least 173 lives.

European Union and United States travel bans, aid freezes from bodies such as the World Bank and the blocking of access to public funds in regional banks have all failed to budge Gbagbo, who has used the military to hold onto power since disputed presidential polls in November.

The presidents of Benin, Sierra Leone and Cape Verde have traveled to Abidjan twice on behalf of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) - accompanied by African Union envoy Odinga on the second occasion - in failed efforts to persuade him to leave.

ECOWAS has warned Gbagbo it could use force to oust him if he does not step down, although analysts feel this is an unlikely scenario given the negative implications for regional security and upcoming elections in Nigeria, which would be the most likely candidate for providing troops.

November's elections were supposed to open a more positive chapter in Ivory Coast's history eight years after civil war split the West African nation into the mainly Muslim north, which backs Ouattara, and the Christian south, where Gbagbo holds sway.

Instead, the polls only highlighted north-south divisions after a Gbagbo ally on the constitutional council overturned electoral commission results proclaiming Ouattara the winner.

The UN has accused pro-Gbagbo forces of extrajudicial killings and disappearances of Ouattara supporters amid unconfirmed reports of the existence of mass graves.

The military on Wednesday staged an early morning raid on the headquarters of the RHDP - a coalition of parties backing Ouattara - and arrested 20 people, according to witnesses.

Some 22,000 Ivorians have fled to neighboring Liberia fearing a return to civil war, the UN refugee agency said.