Ivorian youth leader calls off anti-U.N. protests

By Peter Murphy

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s pro-government youth
leader called off anti-U.N. protests on Thursday as the
Security Council renewed a threat of sanctions to give teeth to
a peace plan hit by riots aimed against peacekeepers.

Protesters dispersed from outside the French embassy, where
pro-government “Young Patriot” leader Charles Ble Goude called
off the action, and protests also eased elsewhere as U.N. and
French army helicopters hovered above the main city Abidjan.

Analysts say the attacks on the peacekeepers appear to be a
coordinated strategy by supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo,
who fear the internationally backed peace process could reduce
his power.

Peacekeepers fired warning shots and tear gas at young
protesters outside U.N. mission headquarters, which has seen
some of the worst violence, but many dispersed as dusk fell.

“There are less of them now. There are about 300-400 people
left. It seems to be clearing up a bit everywhere. There are no
flash points at the moment,” U.N. public information officer
Captain Gilles Combarieu told Reuters.

Four days of riots have revived calls for the U.N. Security
Council to enact targeted sanctions, including a travel ban or
a freeze on assets, which it approved a year ago but has not
yet imposed on those blocking the peace process.

“The people who instigate that violence, who propagate
hatred messages, have to know that the council is moving closer
and closer to taking a very tough decision,” U.N. peacekeeping
chief Jean-Marie Guehenno told reporters after the Council met.

The Council said “targeted measures will be imposed,” but
diplomats said it would simply draw up a list of potential
targets and hold off actually imposing sanctions for now, given
fears that imposing sanctions may merely worsen the disruption.

The protesters, mainly young Gbagbo supporters, have
demanded the withdrawal of U.N. and French troops from the West
African country, divided since a civil war in 2002 between the
rebel-held north and government-controlled south.

They denounced as meddling a call by international
mediators to dissolve the pro-Gbagbo parliament.

“ORCHESTRATED POLICY”

“It is a carefully orchestrated political strategy to show
that the presidential camp is still alive and can influence the
peace process. It’s saying ‘we’re still here and we can block
the process’,” said Gilles Yabi, an analyst on Ivory Coast with
the think tank International Crisis Group.

At least four protesters were killed on Wednesday when they
stormed a U.N. base in the west, forcing peacekeepers to open
fire and later abandon four bases, U.N. staff said.

Ivorian state media put the death toll at five.

Yabi attributed the violence to a power struggle between
Gbagbo and the new prime minister, Charles Konan Banny, who was
installed by international mediators last month to lead the
world’s top cocoa grower to delayed elections by October 31.

Gbagbo, whose mandate expired in October but who is allowed
to stay on until elections under the U.N. plan, appeared
reluctant to cede any of his powers to Banny, Yabi said.

“Using street protests has always been the main tool of the
presidential party,” he added. Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front
(FPI) said on Tuesday it was pulling out of the peace process.

After crisis talks late on Wednesday, Gbagbo and African
Union chief Olusegun Obasanjo appealed for an end to the riots.

Nigerian President Obasanjo secured a public call for calm
from Gbagbo in a joint statement stressing that the foreign
mediators had no power to dissolve parliament.

“We have just won a great victory. I ask you to return
home,” Ble Goude told his Young Patriot supporters outside the
French embassy on Thursday, an Ivorian flag around his neck.

“Our (national) assembly has been restored. As for
disarmament, we give Banny a fortnight to go and present
members of parliament with his government program and with a
timetable to disarm the rebels.”

Banny has the task of disarming the rebels and militias on
both sides.

The riots threatened to derail what has been a fragile
ceasefire since 2003 maintained by nearly 7,600 U.N. troops and
police and 4,000 French soldiers.

(Additional reporting by Ange Aboa and Loucoumane Coulibaly
in Abidjan and Irwin Arieff at the United Nations in New York)