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UN bans arms to Ivory Coast
AFP
17nov04

NEW YORK: The UN Security Council has voted unanimously to impose an immediate arms embargo on Ivory Coast for 13 months in the hope of reviving the west African nation's struggling peace process.

The vote came as France completed the evacuation of about 5000 Westerners and others from the violence-torn nation, while Africans -- with no hope of such rescue -- fled into neighbouring countries.

As Ivory Coast's defiant leader, President Laurent Gbagbo, remained holed up in his lagoon-side mansion and surrounded by hardliners, the security council agreed to impose the embargo, giving the country's warring sides a month to restore peace or face more sanctions.

African leaders urged that the sanctions be imposed immediately.

Mr Gbagbo's Government reopened the nation's civil war on November 4 with air strikes on the rebel-held north. Two days later, Ivory Coast warplanes bombed a French peacekeeping post, killing nine French troops and a US aid worker and plunging the world's top cocoa producer into crisis.

French forces then blew up Ivory Coast's entire air force as the planes sat on the tarmac.

Loyalists led by the Government-allied Young Patriots popular militias took to the streets in five days of violent attacks after the French attack, burning and looting French businesses and schools across the country's south.

Ivory Coast officials say more than 62 died when French forces fired into the crowds. No deaths have been confirmed among non-Africans in the violence, but France says several expatriates were raped.

Rebel leader Guillaume Soro has described the French raids as a "coup d'etat" and accused Mr Gbagbo of pushing the country back towards civil war to serve his own political interests.

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