FORCES ALIGNED with Ivory Coast’s president-elect, Alassane Ouattara, closed in on his rival, Laurent Gbagbo, yesterday, launching a heavy attack on the presidential residence in Abidjan after the failure of surrender negotiations.
Mr Gbagbo, who has resisted international pressure to step down since losing an election last November, began discussing his departure on Tuesday after French and UN forces destroyed most of his army’s heavy weapons.
French foreign minister Alain Juppé told the national assembly that evening that Mr Gbagbo was on the point of leaving, but admitted yesterday that the talks had failed. “The negotiations which were carried out for hours yesterday between the entourage of Laurent Gbagbo and Ivorian authorities have failed because of Gbagbo’s intransigence,” Mr Juppé said in Paris yesterday.
Mr Gbagbo was reported to have taken shelter in a bunker at his residence in Abidjan, the economic capital, surrounded by relatives and close associates.
His forces appeared to be putting up stiff resistance, with reports that Mr Ouattara’s troops had been repelled by heavy weapons during an attempt to storm the building in the Deux-Plateaux district yesterday morning. UN tanks and helicopters were seen in the vicinity of the residence, but the French military said their troops were not involved in the attack.
Citing an unnamed French official, Le Monde reported that Mr Ouattara had taken the decision to storm Mr Gbagbo’s residence after concluding that his rival was simply trying to buy time by taking part in the negotiations.
The talks stalled after he resisted pressure to sign a document renouncing his claim to power and recognising Mr Ouattara as president. “If Gbagbo has refused to sign the documents they [UN and France] presented to him yesterday, it is because they proposed something that had no legal and judicial basis,” Mr Gbagbo’s spokesman, Ahoua Don Mello, said.
The spokesman later suggested Mr Gbagbo wanted a ceasefire and direct talks with his rival. “France and the UN want Gbagbo to leave first, but that’s not possible. The solution can only be political, not military,” he said.
Having maintained a public silence for the past week, a defiant Mr Gbagbo gave two interviews on French media to deny he was about to surrender. “We are not at the negotiating stage. And my departure from where? To go where?” he said on Radio France Internationale.
He told LCI television his army had only called for a ceasefire after its weaponry was destroyed by French and UN air strikes on Monday. “I’m not a kamikaze. I love life. My voice is not the voice of a martyr. No, no, no. I’m not looking for death. It’s not my aim to die,” Mr Gbagbo said.
“For peace to return to Ivory Coast, I and Ouattara, the two of us, have to talk.”
Mr Gbagbo’s camp described yesterday’s attack as an “assassination attempt”, but his rival’s spokesman said their forces had been instructed that Mr Gbagbo was to be captured alive “because we want to bring him to justice”.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court prosecutor said he was in talks with West African states about referring alleged atrocities in Ivory Coast to the court after a reported massacre in the west of the country. UN investigators in the town of Duékoué, where the Red Cross said 800 people were killed last week, yesterday said they had discovered a mass grave containing 200 bodies.