ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Some people yell “U.N. out!” as the Jordanian U.N. peacekeepers pass by in their armored personnel carriers, but these soldiers don’t understand French. One man honks his horn before dragging his thumb across his throat in a gesture that cannot be misunderstood.
The United Nations declared Alassane Ouattara the winner of Ivory Coast’s long- delayed presidential vote, but incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo has refused to step aside now for more than a month. Gbagbo accuses the U.N. of failing to remain neutral, and the U.N. has ignored his demand for thousands of peacekeepers to leave.
Now, peacekeepers patrolling the streets of Abidjan are coming under growing threat. One was wounded with a machete last week when a crowd in a pro-Gbagbo neighborhood attacked a convoy and set a U.N. vehicle on fire. The next day, a U.N. patrol was fired upon from a nearby building as an angry crowd surrounded them. They were forced to fire into the air to disperse the crowd, a U.N. statement said.
Gbagbo accused those peacekeepers of firing on the crowd and reiterated his call for the United Nations mission to leave during an address Saturday on state television. The U.N. denies having fired on the crowd.
“Any attack against peacekeepers constitutes a crime under international law, for which the perpetrators and those who instigate them will be held accountable,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned, a U.N. spokesman said.
“Ivory Coast is at war,” Ouattara’s Prime Minister Guillaume Soro said Saturday, before calling on the international community to intervene with “legitimate force.”
West African leaders from ECOWAS — the Economic Community of West African States — are due to arrive today in Abidjan to negotiate Gbagbo’s departure. They will be joined by African Union emissary Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister who was widely thought to have won the presidential election in his country in 2007, but in the end settled for a power-sharing deal with President Mwai Kibaki.
