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Gbagbo skips peace summit
14/11/2004 18:35 - (SA)
Abidjan - African leaders convened an emergency summit on Sunday on Ivory Coast without the country's defiant leader - still holed up in his mansion, after newly promoting the hard-line commander whose forces launched a deadly air strike on French peacekeepers to head of his armed forces.
As a French-led evacuation of Ivory Coast builds to one of Africa's largest, French President Jacques Chirac denounced President Laurent Gbagbo's "questionable regime" - and said France, Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler, would not tolerate much more.
"We do not want to allow a system to develop that would lead only to anarchy or a regime of a fascist nature," Chirac told an audience in the southern French city of Marseille.
French civilians and other foreigners sprawled on Sunday on camp beds set up in the departure lounge of Abidjan's international airport, their cats and dogs lined up in pet cages on the tarmac just outside - all waiting for loading onto an Air France jumbo jet for the latest in five days of evacuation flights.
France's heavy criticism, and African efforts to resolve the crisis, come after a five-day spate of anti-foreigner rampages last week that have sent Westerners and Africans fleeing a nation that once was stable and prosperous, and the pride of France's former West African empire.
Invited to a heads-of-state summit called by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, Gbagbo announced through a spokesperson he would send the head of parliament instead. Gbagbo 'ready for any eventuality'
"The country is in a crisis. He prefers to be here, to be ready for any eventuality," spokesperson Desire Tagro told The Associated Press, referring to Gbagbo.
Ivory Coast's crisis began when Gbagbo's military broke a more than year-old cease-fire in the country's 2-year-old civil war with air strikes on the rebel-held north.
Warplanes bombed a French peacekeeping post in the north on November 6, killing nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker and plunging the country into chaos.
France wiped out Ivory Coast's newly built-up airport on the tarmac and seized control of the main airports in the loyalist south. The retaliation unleashed a violent loyalist uprising, with Gbagbo-allied Young Patriots popular militia leading looting, burning and attacks that targeted the French.
No deaths have been reported among French or other non-African foreigners targeted by the militia. France says attackers raped several expatriates. 'Human shield'
On Sunday, a few score Young Patriots manned roadblocks around Gbagbo's lagoon-side mansion and maintained a vigil outside nearby state broadcasting offices.
Fearing an overthrow attempt by France, the Gbagbo-allied militia have called for a "human shield" around the two sites until French troops leave Ivory Coast.
Chirac said the 4 000 French peacekeepers would remain, alongside a more than 6 000-man UN peace force.
- AP
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