Deadly demo an 'armed revolt'
2004-03-26 09:53
Abidjan - Ivory Coast's peace process lay in tatters late on Thursday as President Laurent Gbagbo's party branded a banned demonstration as an "attempted armed revolt" and opposition leaders quit the government to protest the killing of up to 30 people.
As they abandoned the fragile unity government of the west African country, still riven after a civil war broke out in September 2002, opposition members and former rebels pledged defiantly to stage further protests.
Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) denounced Thursday's demonstration in Abidjan as an insurrection and blamed the opposition for the deaths.
"Rather than a peaceful march, what we saw was an attempted armed revolt: attacks on the defence and security forces, police stations and buildings housing the defence forces," the party's secretary general Miaka Oureto said on RTI national television.
Oureto firmly condemned what he called "this umpteenth barbaric act against honest citizens and against the republic".
He said responsibility for the deaths of protesters, killed by security forces engaged to quash the demonstration, lay with the main opposition parties, the Rally of Republicans (RDR) and the Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI), as well as two smaller parties and former rebels.
The party, he said, denounces "the notorious irresponsibility of all those who called for this uprising, which won't call itself by its real name".
Barbaric repression
The former rebels, called the New Forces since they signed a peace deal in January 2003, said in a statement that following the "barbaric repression of the peaceful march... (they) decided to suspend their participation in the national reconciliation government."
The RDR and PDCI were among the main organisers of what they had intended to be a "peaceful march" to protest at Gbagbo's failure to respect the terms of the peace deal, known as the Marcoussis accord.
But Gbagbo ratcheted up tensions early in the week by putting the army on high alert. On Thursday commanders of the presidential and national guards warned that demonstrators would be deemed enemy combatants and then shot if they got too close to the presidential palace.
The RDR said 30 people had been killed in clashes that broke out, including three police officers.
But national police chief Yapo Kouassi later put the toll at 25 dead including two police officers.
In response, the RDR said it was pulling out of the unity government. The other main party, the PDCI, quit earlier this month.
No sitting down
"After the president decided to open fire on the people, there is no sitting down at the same table, even for negotiations," said MFA Vice President Joel Nguessan.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed for calm, while France and Switzerland also voiced concern after the clashes.
In a statement, Annan urged all Ivorian parties to "put the national interest foremost (and) stop all confrontations".
"At a time when the UN is preparing the deployment of a peacekeeping operation, the Ivorian parties must demonstrate the political will to reject all forms of violence", he added.
Oureto, the head of Gbagbo's ruling party, blamed the former rebels for intentionally trying to delay the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force.
He said Gbagbo's party called on international powers to "show more determination... against a rebellion which... is doing all it can to delay the arrival of the UN forces".
Members of the opposition said they were preparing to re-launch protests on Friday in Abidjan, the country's commercial capital, to demand the implementation of a peace accord.
Bacongo Cisse, of the RDR, said he "asked the activists to stay in the streets.
"The march will continue tomorrow (Friday), and so on, until we will reach Republic Square," close to the president's office, he said.
In September 2002, a military uprising quickly boiled over into a larger-scale civil war in Ivory Coast, the world's top producer of cocoa and a former beacon of stability for the region.
The country remains divided, with rebels holding the north, despite the Marcoussis accord signed 14 months ago.
Protesters on Thursday were calling on Gbagbo to adhere to Marcoussis's directive to cede some executive power to a prime minister.
Gbagbo neither attended the talks that led to the accord nor signed the pact, but endorsed it a day after it was reached by members of his government, opposition groups and the rebels.