The first recognised ambassador of Côte d'Ivoire's internationally-backed president Alassane Ouattara said on Tuesday that the United Nations had to act to prevent "genocide" in his country. The envoy, Youssoufou Bamba, made the plea after handing over his credentials as envoy to the United Nations to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Ban promised the "full cooperation" of the UN leadership for the government of Ouattara who is in a tense stand-off with Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to recognise the victory of his rival in Côte d'Ivoire's November 28 presidential election. The ambassador said Ouattara had "real concern" about attacks on his supporters. According to UN rights officials at least 173 people were killed in attacks between December 16 and 21.
The victims were only killed "because they wanted to demonstrate, they want to speak out, they want to defend the will of the people", Bamba told reporters. "We are on the brink of genocide, something should be done." Bamba said people's homes in some areas had been marked according to their tribe. "What will be next? So the situation is very serious and I have put that message across in all the meetings I have had, including with the secretary general. The protection of civilians is at the heart of peacekeeping and we expect the United Nations to fulfill its duties," he said.
There is a UN force of more than 9 500 troops in Côte d'Ivoire and 800 are deployed around the Abidjan hotel where Ouattara has his base. Ban made no comment on the Côte d'Ivoire crisis when he formally accepted Bamba's credentials in front of photographers at the UN headquarters. But he assured the envoy "of the full cooperation of the secretariat in meeting the challenges ahead". Ban was briefed again on Tuesday by the UN mission in Côte d'Ivoire on efforts to persuade Gbagbo to peacefully stand down, his spokesperson Martin Nesirky said.
The UN chief also held telephone talks with Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan, current chairperson of the West African regional bloc Ecowas, which has threatened to intervene militarily if Gbagbo does not quit. Bamba, who was previously ambassador for the Gbagbo government at the UN in Vienna, is the first ambassador named by the Ouattara administration to have started work. He hinted that he was not yet being paid, saying that as a career diplomat "I have savings."
Meanwhile, Gbagbo's most notorious street lieutenant has vowed that the country's youth will rise up from Saturday and seize Ouattara's headquarters. "From January 1, I, Charles Ble Goude and the youth of Ivory Coast are going to liberate the Golf Hotel with our bare hands," the leader of Gbagbo's radical Young Patriots told a cheering crowd in Abidjan on Wednesday. "It's the moment to liberate Ivory Coast," he declared.
Political showman and faction leader Ble Goude is now Gbagbo's minister for youth and employment, but he is best known for stoking bloody anti-French riots in 2004, a role which saw him placed under United Nations sanctions. "We are ready to die for this Ivory Coast," he declared, while insisting that his supporters were unarmed and hoped to triumph through strength of numbers and will against Ouattara's men. "We are mocked by rebels," he complained.
Tension is mounting in and around the Golf Hotel -- a waterfront resort on the outskirts of the port city which Ouattara and his supporters had turned into an election headquarters. The shadow government in the hotel is guarded by a small contingent of former northern rebel fighters dubbed the New Forces, and the grounds are shielded by armed UN peacekeepers backed by armoured cars.
Access to the area is blocked by Gbagbo's regulars, the Security and Defence Forces (FDS), working alongside what UN observers say are mysterious masked militia fighters armed with rocket-propelled grenades. UN supply convoys are regularly blocked as they try to cross Abidjan -- one patrol was attacked on Tuesday a mob of pro-Gbagbo youths and a Bangladeshi soldier was hurt -- and the hotel is supplied by UN helicopter.
Source: Mail & Guardian
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