The United States has approved travel sanctions against Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo.
|||Abidjan - The United States has approved travel sanctions on Laurent Gbagbo and 30 of his allies as pressure mounts on the incumbent leader to step down following November’s presidential election that the international community says he lost.
Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency said about 6200 people already had fled the West African country's post-election violence, and regional leaders called on Gbagbo to “yield power with dignity without further delay”.
The rebuke from neighbouring nations carries added weight because Gbagbo's representatives have dismissed similar calls from former coloniser France and other Western nations as foreign interference.
The regional bloc, Ecowas, also said Gbagbo's weekend demand that thousands of UN peacekeepers leave the volatile country “would further heighten tensions and worsen the plight of the vulnerable”.
The UN has certified Alassane Ouattara as the winner of the November 28 vote and Gbagbo on Saturday ordered the nearly 9000 UN peacekeepers leave immediately. The UN has refused to do so and a Security Council resolution adopted unanimously Monday extended the force's mandate until June 30, 2011.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon warned on Tuesday that Ivory Coast faced “a real risk” of return to civil war.
He said the UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast had “confirmed that mercenaries, including freelance former combatants from Liberia, have been recruited to target certain groups in the population.”
He said forces loyal to Gbagbo are also obstructing the movement of UN personnel and their operations and called on member states to do what they can to supply the UN mission.
US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton has authorised travel sanctions against members of Gbagbo's government, a US official said on Tuesday.
William Fitzgerald, the US deputy assistant secretary for African affairs, said the move initially concerned about 30 people, though he could not give their names, in accordance with US law. He said the travel sanctions would take effect immediately.
The children and close family members of Gbagbo backers could also be deported from the US, for example if they were studying or interning there, he said. A senior adviser to Gbagbo confirmed earlier in December that Gbagbo's stepdaughters - the children of the first lady - are believed to be living in the Atlanta area.
Fitzgerald said there was also the further possibility of later trade sanctions against individuals.
“All options are open for the United States, African countries and European countries,” he said. “Pressure will be increased in the future. I can't say exactly what we are going to do.”
Asked if a military option was possible, Fitzgerald repeated that “all options remain on the table” but said that US troops would “probably not” get involved.
A day earlier, the European Union said it would impose an assets freeze and a visa ban on Gbagbo and his wife after a deadline for him to step down elapsed. Gbagbo spent years as an expatriate in France.
Sanctions, though, have typically failed to reverse illegal power grabs in Africa in the past.
Emile Guieroulou, Gbagbo's interior minister, said on Monday that they were not threatened by the prospect of sanctions.
“The president Laurent Gbagbo doesn't go to Europe on vacation, so it's not even a real sanction,” Guieroulou said. “Even if this costs us, we will not give in. It's the lives of the people of Ivory Coast that count for us.”
The UN says more than 50 people have been killed in recent days in Ivory Coast, and that it has received hundreds of reports of people being abducted from their homes at night by armed assailants in military uniforms. UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay has cited growing evidence of “huge violations of human rights.”
Amnesty International on Tuesday said that it had also received reports from eyewitnesses of people being arrested or abducted, both at home and on the streets, by security forces loyal to Gbagbo. In a report, the group said that bodies had been found in morgues and on the streets, and that violence and intimidation has not been confined to Abidjan.
Salvatore Sagues, Amnesty International's West Africa researcher, said: “It is clear that more and more people are being illegally detained by security forces or armed militiamen and we fear that many of them may have been killed or have disappeared.
Fears also have risen that UN personnel and other foreigners could be targeted in violence as tensions mount over the election. Over the weekend, masked gunmen opened fire on the UN base in Ivory Coast, though no one from the global body was harmed in the attack. Two military observers were wounded in another attack. The UN also says armed men have been intimidating UN staff at their private homes.
Toussaint Alain, an adviser for Gbagbo, said he didn't believe soldiers or people close to Gbagbo would carry out such acts.
“The UN is trying to manipulate public opinion and is looking for a pretext for a military intervention,” he said, blaming possible kidnappings on supporters of Gbagbo's opponent, disguised in military uniforms.
The UN refugee agency said on Tuesday that 6000 people had already fled to Liberia and another 200 to Guinea. UNHCR has been airlifting additional supplies to Liberia and Guinea from its emergency stockpile in Copenhagen to be ready to help as many as 30 000 refugees.
Ivory Coast was once an economic hub because of its role as the world's top cocoa producer. A 2002-2003 civil war split the country into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south. While the country officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal, Ouattara still draws his support from the northern half of the country where he was born while Gbagbo's power base is in the south.
Gbagbo claimed victory in the presidential election only after his allies threw out half a million ballots from Ouattara strongholds in the north, a move that infuriated residents there who have long felt they are treated as foreigners in their own country by southerners. - Sapa-AP
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