Anti-UN protesters refuse to budge despite president's plea for calm

After a flying visit and three hours of talks with the head of the African Union, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Ivorian president and new Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny issued a statement late Wednesday urging an end to the protests that have gripped the government controlled south since the weekend.

"Obasanjo, the president of the republic and the prime minister ask the population to get off the streets and go back home," said the statement broadcast on national radio on Wednesday night.

"The president of the republic and the prime minister invite the population across the national territory to resume work as of tomorrow, 19 January 2006."

But on Thursday morning, two thousands protestors remained outside UN headquarters and hundreds more outside the French embassy in Abidjan where workers have been blocked inside for several days.

"The situation is still the same despite the statements issued by the president yesterday," UN military spokesman Gilles Combarieu told IRIN.

"The security forces are still not intervening and not doing anything to keep these youths from attacking our headquarters," he said.

Violent protests demanding the departure of 10,000 UN and French peacekeeping troops have swept southern Cote d'Ivoire since Monday. The country has been split in two since a September 2002 rebellion.

Overnight, besieged UN peacekeepers withdrew from two more bases in the troubled western region. In total some 800-900 UN troops have withdrawn from four bases in Blolequin, Duekoue, Guiglo and Toulepleu, according to French military sources.

The peacekeepers have taken new positions close to the UN and French monitored buffer zone that marks the front line between rebel and government forces.

UN peacekeepers in San Pedro in the south west and Daloa 250 km northwest of Abidjan, have had their headquarters surrounded by crowds of hundreds of youths, said Combarieu.

"We can no longer speak of peaceful demonstration," said Combarieu, "this is terrorism."

Barricades remained in place on major thoroughfares in the north of Abidjan and around the port area, and residents told IRIN by telephone they would not return to work until they were sure the violence was over. Others who had turned out for work headed back home after seeing the situation unchanged.

Witnesses told IRIN they had seen security forces bringing food and water to some of the protesters. Some youths had been seen bringing jerry cans of petrol.

On Thursday, five people were killed and scores injured in the cocoa-producing west when protesters loyal to Gbagbo stormed UN compounds and torched UN agency facilities.

Several hundred blue-helmets were forced to beat a retreat and abandon bases in Guiglo and nearby Duekoue on Wednesday, both some 350 km from Abidjan.

"UN forces are exercising maximum restraint in dealing with these attacks," said UN chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric in New York.

The trouble started on Sunday shortly after a panel of mediators monitoring a UN peace plan - the International Working Group (IWG), co-chaired by UN head of mission Pierre Schori - said there was no reason to prolong the National Assembly's five-year mandate, which ran out last 16 December.

Members of the Young Patriots pro-Gbagbo youth movement took the IWG stance as a de facto dissolution of parliament and accused the UN of meddling in Ivorian state affairs.

And Gbagbo's ruling FPI, which dominates the assembly, on Tuesday announced in protest it was quitting the peace process and pulling out its seven members in a transitional government headed by Banny.

But the statement issued by Gbagbo, Banny and Obasanjo on Wednesday stated that was not the case: "The working group does not have the power to dissolve the national assembly...the working group has not dissolved the national assembly."

Obasanjo has played a key role in enforcing the latest in a series of peace plans to disarm the rival factions and hold presidential elections by next October.

But this week's unrest, which UN Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced as a campaign of "orchestrated violence", threatens to derail this latest peace blueprint, UN Resolution 1633 adopted by the Security Council last October.

Angry protesters loyal to Gbagbo took over state television on Wednesday and broadcast calls for mass anti-UN demonstrations in the street.

A spokesman for the New Forces rebel movement, Sidiki Konate, meanwhile warned that the country was on the edge of war and said the UN withdrawal from Guiglo and Duekoue meant local populations had been left with no protection.

"This is not just about UN soldiers. This is about the lives of millions of Ivorians that the UN are supposed to be protecting," he told IRIN

At the UN base in Guiglo, as well as at the offices of the aid group Save The Children, looters made away with everything they could salvage.

Residents told IRIN that at a local radio station at Daloa, 25 km from Guiglo, Young Patriots had demanded the station transmit pro-government propaganda. But when workers refused, the station was ransacked and looted.

In Abidjan, Young Patriot protesters have been massing through the week outside UN headquarters and the French Embassy in the city centre.

At a hillside hotel housing the main UN offices, UN troops this week were forced to fire tear gas grenades and live bullets to warn off a crowd of protestors that broke through the outer fence and were trying to batter down the walls.

Meanwhile Young Patriots leader Charles Ble Goude said in a statement read out on Ivorian radio on Wednesday: "We and our friends. have been in front of the French Embassy for the past three days. because France has been hiding behind the UN Operation in Cote d'Ivoire."

"France provided arms and organised this internal war which is bereaving our country," he said.

His group was especially vocal against France in violence in November 2004 that led to the evacuation of thousands of French nationals from the country.

And in Paris, French army chief of staff, General Henri Bentegeat told French Europe 1 radio that the time had come to slap for the AU to agree to long-threatened UN sanctions on Cote d'Ivoire.

"The UN Security Council has for a long time warned that it would impose sanctions on Cote d'Ivoire. The African Union still needs to be ready to accept the sanctions because the UN will not make any decision without the Africans and I think the time has now come," said Bentegeat.

The UN Security Council, which voted a year ago for targeted sanctions against individuals blocking the peace process, is to meet on Thursday to discuss the tension in Cote d'Ivoire for the second time this week. The sanctions include a travel ban or freeze on assets.

This week, Annan expressed "deep concern" at the situation in Cote d'Ivoire, condemning the "orchestrated violence directed against the United Nations, the population, as well as the inactions of some national authorities in responding to the situation."