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Gbagbo Defiant to West African Leaders (news)
WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-12-29 Time: 13:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
A delegation of West African leaders yesterday met Cote d “Ivoire’s embattled President Laurent Gbagbo yesterday and demanded that he step down from the presidency or face forceful removal.
The presidents of Sierra Leone, Benin and Cape Verde arrived in Abidjan, the capital city, yesterday and handed Gbagbo the ultimatum at the presidential palace after first speaking with the top United Nations envoy in Ivory Coast.
“We are leaving today and returning today after discussions with Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast and we are sure of getting positive results,” Sierra Leone’s information and communication minister Ibrahim Ben Kargbo said yesterday.
But Gbagbo’s government warned that it would not tolerate any meddling in its affairs.
“Let’s avoid political delinquency. No international institution has the right to intervene by force to impose a president in a sovereign state,” government spokesman, Ahua Don Melo told the BBC when asked if Gbagbo would quit power.
U.N. helicopters were to later fly the delegation to the Golf Hotel to meet with Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of the runoff election held one month ago. The United States, the European Union and the African Union have also pressured Gbagbo to step down.
The 15-nation regional bloc ECOWAS has threatened to use “legitimate force” if Gbagbo does not relinquish power. Nigeria has the strongest army in the region and is expected to play a major role if an operation is launched to oust Gbagbo. Ouattara’s camp has been confident in recent days that such help is coming.
“It’s not a bluff,” one senior Ouattara adviser said Monday on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “The soldiers are coming much faster than anyone thinks.”
ECOWAS has intervened in past disputes, including the seizing of Sierra Leone’s capital in 1998 that forced military junta leaders to flee and allowed an elected president to return to power.
ECOWAS also intervened in Liberia in 1990 and its forces stayed for several years, and it sent troops to Guinea-Bissau. Some analysts feel an ECOWAS mission in Ivory Coast would entail a full-scale invasion, causing numerous civilian casualties.
Weeks of postelection violence have left at least 173 people dead, according to the U.N. The toll is believed to be much higher. The U.N. said it has been unable to investigate reports of a mass grave because of restrictions on U.N. personnel movements.
The French government says its forces in Ivory Coast will protect French citizens but won’t be making any decisions about an international military intervention.
Many Ivorians are terrified of Gbagbo’s security forces. Human rights groups blame security forces associated with Gbagbo for hundreds of arrests and dozens of cases of torture and disappearances since the election. A Gbagbo adviser has said he does not believe his supporters could be behind the violence.
Gbagbo has been in power since 2000 and had already overstayed his mandate by five years when the long-delayed presidential election was finally held in October, with the runoff coming in November.
The election was intended to help reunify a country that was divided by the civil war into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south. While Ivory Coast was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal, Ouattara still draws his support from the northern half of the country, where residents feel they are often treated as foreigners within their own country by southerners.
The regional bloc ECOWAS is comprised of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.
