IVORY COAST: Ivory coast Young Patriots leader calls off anti-U.N. protests.

Record ID: 182552

  • Title: IVORY COAST: Ivory coast Young Patriots leader calls off anti-U.N. protests.
  • Date: 20th January 2006
  • Summary: WIDE OF YOUNG PATRIOTS CHANTING "WOODY WOODY WOODY" (GBAGBO'S FAMILIAR NAME)
  • Embargoed: 4th February 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVADQVZWNGWZHSOMSIU4JWL79QCB
  • Story Text: Ivory Coast's pro-government youth leader Charles Ble Goude called off anti-U.N. protests on Thursday (January 19) as the the Security Council studied possible sanctions to give teeth to a peace plan battered by riots targeting U.N. peacekeepers.
    After crisis talks late Wednesday, Gbagbo and African Union chief Olusegun Obasanjo appealed to Ivorians to halt the riots, which have revived calls for the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on those blocking the peace process.
    Protesters dispersed from outside the French embassy, where pro-government "Young Patriot" leader Charles Ble Goude called off the action, and protests also eased elsewhere as U.N. and French army helicopters hovered above the main city Abidjan.
    The protesters, mainly young supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo, have demanded the withdrawal of U.N. and French troops from the West African nation, split since a 2002 civil war between a rebel-held north and government-controlled south.
    They denounced as meddling a call by international mediators to dissolve the pro-Gbagbo parliament.
    At least four protesters were killed on Wednesday when they stormed a U.N. base in the west, forcing blue helmets to open fire, and later abandon four bases, U.N. staff said. Peacekeepers fired warning shots and tear gas at young protesters outside U.N. mission headquarters, which has seen some of the worst violence, but many dispersed as dusk fell.
    Four days of riots have revived calls for the U.N. Security Council to enact targeted sanctions, including a travel ban or a freeze on assets, which it approved a year ago but has not yet imposed on those blocking the peace process.
    The Council said "targeted measures will be imposed," but diplomats said it would simply draw up a list of potential targets and hold off actually imposing sanctions for now, given fears that imposing sanctions may merely worsen the disruption.
    Yabi attributed the violence to a power struggle between Gbagbo and the new prime minister, Charles Konan Banny, who was installed by international mediators last month to lead the world's top cocoa grower to delayed elections by October 31.
    Gbagbo, whose mandate expired in October but who is allowed to stay on until elections under the U.N. plan, appeared reluctant to cede any of his powers to Banny, Yabi said.
    After crisis talks late on Wednesday, Gbagbo and African Union chief Olusegun Obasanjo appealed for an end to the riots.
    Nigerian President Obasanjo secured a public call for calm from Gbagbo in a joint statement stressing that the foreign mediators had no power to dissolve parliament.
    "We have just won a great victory. I ask you to return home," Ble Goude told his Young Patriot supporters outside the French embassy on Thursday, an Ivorian flag around his neck.
    The riots threatened to derail what has been a fragile ceasefire since 2003 maintained by nearly 7,600 U.N. troops and police and 4,000 French soldiers.
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