A former prime minister, Alassane Ouattara, returned to Ivory Coast today and said the ousting of President Henri Konan Bedie by the army on Friday was not a coup but a revolution to get rid of an ''outlaw regime.'' ''This is not a coup d'etat,'' he told reporters at Abidjan airport after stepping off a plane from Paris. ''This is a revolution supported by all the Ivorian people.'' He said he regretted the way power had changed hands, but added, ''We were in an outlaw state.'' Mr. Ouattara arrived with his wife, Dominique, and was greeted by supporters and journalists. About 200 more supporters outside the airport chanted ''A.D.O., president,'' using his initials. Mr. Ouattara left his job as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund in July to take the leadership of the Rally of the Republicans Party and to prepare a challenge to Mr. Bedie in the presidential election scheduled for next October. Mr. Bedie claimed that Mr. Ouattara was actually from neighboring Burkina Faso, which would make him ineligible to run for president. A judge began investigating whether Mr. Ouattara had submitted forged documents to prove his nationality, and an arrest warrant was issued. Mr. Ouattara was out of the country at the time and chose to remain in France. An official from his party said that a court had ruled on Tuesday that there were no grounds to pursue the forgery allegation, and that the arrest warrant had been canceled. The military junta has invited the political parties to nominate potential ministers in a transitional government. Elections have been promised, but no timetable has been set. Mr. Ouattara, asked whether he might be a member of the interim government, said no, but he added, ''My wish is to serve my country through the transition.'' He said he would be a candidate in the presidential election. The junta's leader, Gen. Robert Guei, today continued a series of meetings to explain the coup, meeting religious leaders and urging them to rally round the transition. ''Mr. Bedie should not have taken the liberty of meddling in religious matters,'' said General Guei, who is a Roman Catholic. ''I was shocked, sometimes indignant to see that people wanted to use religion to divide the country.'' General Guei asked a Muslim leader who is close to Mr. Bedie to dissolve his own organization and join the mainstream National Islamic Council. The Muslim leader, Moustapha Diaby Koweit, had no immediate comment. The general has taken pains to woo Mr. Bedie's Baoule ethnic group and the Agni, who have dominated in power since the nation became independent in 1960. ''There are those who think that the Baoule ethnic group went too far,'' he said on Tuesday in the capital, Yamoussoukro, in the heart of the central Baoule region. ''It's not that at all. It was the behavior of one man.'' In Bamako, the capital of Mali, two rival Ivoirian delegations held an emergency meeting of West African foreign ministers to discuss the coup in Ivory Coast. One delegation represented the Ivoirian junta, which was led by Gen. Adboulaye Coulibaly; another represented Mr. Bedie and was led by his defense minister, Vincent Bandama N'Gatta. Mr. N'Gatta and Prime Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan fled with Mr. Bedie to Togo under French protection after the coup.

Ivory Coast's military ruler, Gen. Robert Guei, said today that he had escaped an assassination attempt at his residence during the night but that two of his bodyguards had been killed. General Guei, who came to power after a coup last December, said a presidential election would go ahead as planned on Oct. 22. "Some young military people were more or less invited by certain people who are known to me to make an attempt on my life," he said at a news conference. Military sources said as many as 10 people from both sides had been killed. He declined to say who those "certain people" were, but colleagues of a political rival, former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara, said they feared that the military government would use the attack as an excuse for a crackdown on Mr. Ouattara.

Communications Minister Henri Cesar Sama said members of the presidential guard were involved in the attack. He said the operation to round up the attackers was continuing tonight. Until the December coup, the first since independence from France in 1960, Ivory Coast had been a rare haven of stability in a violent, volatile part of West Africa. The coup was preceded by a pay mutiny and months of ethnic tension, whipped up in part by President Henri Konan Bedie, who was trying to turn the country against Mr. Ouattara and was ousted in the coup.

Some in the military are known to be unhappy with General Guei's decision to run for president in October. At the time of the coup he had said that he had no interest in political power.

Source: New York Times