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United nations arms sanctions embargo on ivory coast Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Ivory Coast rebels, France welcome arms embargo
16 Nov 2004 10:30:21 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Nick Tattersall
ABIDJAN, Nov 16 (Reuters) - A senior rebel commander in Ivory Coast welcomed an immediate arms embargo on the world's top cocoa grower on Tuesday as France hailed the U.N. sanctions as a victory for international law.
The 15-nation U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted a sanctions resolution on Monday, drafted by France, after the government launched bombing raids on the rebel-held north on Nov. 4, shattering an 18-month truce.
Fears that war in Ivory Coast could suck in West African neighbours has prompted urgent talks among diplomats and African leaders, desperate to stop a country once feted as a model of post-independence prosperity sliding into anarchy.
"The embargo is a good thing. It's going to put an end to impunity and prevent people from doing whatever they like," Cherif Ousmane, military commander of the main rebel stronghold Bouake, told Reuters.
International cocoa prices closed higher on Monday ahead of the U.N. vote, despite the resumption of cocoa exports this week, on concerns that more violence could erupt.
France was furious when an Ivory Coast fighter bombed one of its bases in Bouake, killing nine soldiers and a U.S. civilian. France then destroyed Ivory Coast's small air force, sparking days of anti-French riots in the main city of Abidjan.
"It (the resolution) is a success for international law under the auspices of the United Nations," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told Europe 1 radio on Tuesday.
"It's an intense pressure, formal, unanimous and international on those who bear responsibility and who are tempted to fight so that they get back on the road to political dialogue," Barnier said.
French soldiers took to the streets to stop the riots and relations between Ivory Coast's former colonial ruler, which now has some 5,000 soldiers in the country, and President Laurent Gbagbo have taken a marked turn for the worse.
French President Jacques Chirac has said Gbagbo is at the head of a "questionable regime", and Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie called on Gbagbo's aides on Monday to stop making "racist and xenophobic declarations".
Gbagbo, in turn, has accused France of backing the rebels, a charge repeated on Monday by his ambassador to the United Nations, Philippe Djangone-Bi, who said Paris had become "a party to the conflict" in siding with the rebels in drafting the text.
"It is well known, one cannot be judge and judged," he told reporters after the vote.
Djangone-Bi declined to say whether his government was in the process of buying aircraft.
Ivorian military sources said the government had ordered three Sukhoi fighter jets and three Mi-24 helicopter gunships and that two of each had already arrived in nearby states.
South African President Thabo Mbeki said in Brussels he would meet rebel leader Guillaume Soro later this week. (Additional reporting by Ange Aboa in Yamoussoukro, Irwin Arieff in New York and Emmanuel Jarry in Paris)
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