Pro-government rioters yesterday lobbed stones and petrol bombs at the French embassy in Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, in furious protest at a peace deal they said had been imposed by France and favoured rebel factions.
The huge popular protests were an early and ominous indication of the difficulties facing a peace accord reached outside Paris in the early hours of Friday following talks between the west African country’s main political parties and rebel groups.
The attacks, which also damaged other French interests, including a cultural centre, military base and many French-owned businesses, were met with stun-guns, water cannon and teargas by French legionnaires.
The foreign ministry in Paris warned all its citizens in Ivory Coast to stay indoors. There were no immediate reports of casualties, although some rioters claimed that the French army’s defence of the embassy had seriously injured at least two protesters.
President Laurent Gbagbo appealed for calm from Paris, where he was attending a summit of west African leaders called to ratify the accord and to agree an aid package aimed at rebuilding Ivory Coast after four months of increasingly bloody civil war.
Gbagbo, whom rebels claimed had deliberately fanned racial discrimination and tension since his hotly disputed election in 2000, bowed to international pressure on Saturday and agreed to share power with his political rivals and the main rebel leaders.
He named a respected former prime minister from the rebel-held Muslim north, Seydou Diarra, to head a government of national reconciliation charged with preparing fair elections and overseeing the disarmament of all factions in the fighting.
”I ask Ivorians to remain calm, to go home and wait for me to return,” Gbagbo told his rioting supporters. The French president, Jacques Chirac, made the same plea but said he saw no reason yet to bolster the 2 500-strong French soldiers in Ivory Coast.
The accord is a last-ditch attempt to halt a war in which hundreds have been killed and more than a million displaced, and which has split the once-prosperous country along ethnic lines. It seeks to resolve Ivory Coast’s immediate polit ical crisis and the deep racial divisions behind it.
It has been condemned by supporters of both sides in Ivory Coast. In the rebel-held north, many are deeply disappointed that the highly controversial Gbagbo kept his job. In the more heavily Christian south the deal is seen by many as a capitulation to rebels.
Demonstrators in Abidjan were particularly angry at an announcement by the rebels that they had been offered the key defence and interior ministry portfolios in the new coalition government. Many blamed France for what they saw as the accord’s injustices.
”France has disappointed us,” said Ble Goude, an influential youth leader who has organised weeks of often violent pro-government demonstrations. ”They gave power to the very people who took up arms against Ivory Coast. They have opened Pandora’s box.” – Guardian Unlimited Â