THE political crisis in Cote d’ Ivoire may not be over yet as defeated President Laurent Gbagbo is holed up in a bunker instead of handing over power to Alassane Ouattara who is said to have won the country’s presidential election.
The Associated Press (AP) said yesterday that as the political stalemate dragged on in Abidjan, there were new concerns about tensions erupting into violence in the country’s west. The United Nations (U.N) said more than 100 bodies had been found, and that some of the victims had been burned alive.
“All the incidents appear at least partly ethnically motivated,” said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, in Geneva.
News of the bodies came a day after the International Rescue Committee warned that chaos was escalating, citing an “explosive mix of political, economic and ethnic tension” in the West African nation thrown into disarray by the November presidential election.
“Even if the political and military showdown in Abidjan ends today, we’re concerned that looting, hostility, bloodshed, reprisal killings and sexual assaults will escalate in communities across the country,” said Louis Falcy, the IRC’s country director in Cote d’Ivoire.
In his first television appearance since the siege of Abidjan began, Ouattara said late Thursday that his forces were setting up a security perimeter around the compound where Gbagbo is staying with his family.
Ouattara also said his troops would work to secure the streets of Abidjan, where people have hidden inside their homes this week amid heavy arms fire. U.N. and French forces have been attacking Gbagbo’s weapons arsenal, which has been used against civilians during the four-month-long political standoff.
In his speech, Ouattara also sought to get the economy of the world’s largest cocoa producer functioning again, calling for banks to open on Monday and for the European Union to lift sanctions so that cocoa exports can resume. The goals are ambitious ones, though, under security conditions so dire that U.N. and French forces have been evacuating foreigners from Abidjan neighborhoods.
Ouattara was declared the winner of the November presidential election but Gbagbo has refused to cede power. On Thursday, he continued to insist he’d won and stressed he would never leave the West African country he has ruled for the past 10 years.
“I reached the head of state and his wife less than an hour ago and no, he will not surrender. President Gbagbo will not cede,” said his adviser Toussaint Alain by telephone from Paris. “It’s a question of principle. President Gbagbo is not a monarch. He is not a king. He is not an emperor. He is a president elected by his people.”
Gbagbo was declared the loser both by his country’s electoral body and by international observers including the U.N. After four months of diplomacy, Ouattara gave the go-ahead for a military intervention led by fighters from a former rebel group. U.N. and French forces joined the effort this week.
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