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Protests rock Ivory Coast

Ruling party pulls out of peace process

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- Ivory Coast's ruling party said on Tuesday it was pulling out of a U.N. peace process in the war-divided West African country, throwing into confusion international efforts to end the long-running crisis there.

President Laurent Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front party (FPI) made the announcement as supporters of the president staged a wave of protests against a call by foreign mediators to dissolve the national parliament.

They called for the withdrawal of more than 7,000 U.N. troops and police from the world's top cocoa grower, which has been split since a 2002 civil war between a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south.

In one incident at Guiglo in the west, hundreds of pro-Gbagbo protesters entered a U.N. military base.

In the economic capital, Abidjan, there were protests outside U.N. offices, and U.N. vehicles were stoned.

"The FPI declares it is pulling out of the peace process and declares its refusal to continue for much longer in a recolonization process overseen by the U.N.," FPI party president Pascal Affi N'Guessan said.

He called on Gbagbo to rid the country of the U.N. peacekeepers and 4,000 French troops who have been deployed since the war to keep rebel and government forces apart.

The United Nations and international mediators are struggling to implement a long-delayed peace plan that now requires a presidential election to be held by the end of October following a process of disarmament.

Pro-government protests in Abidjan and other cities erupted after an international working group charged with overseeing the U.N. peace process recommended Sunday that the Ivorian parliament, whose mandate expired last month, should not be reconvened.

Supporters of Gbagbo accused international mediators and the U.N. of overstepping their authority and trying to override Ivory Coast's sovereign institutions.

The disturbances and pullout announcement by the FPI complicate the task of the country's new prime minister, Charles Konan Banny, who was installed last month under the U.N. peace blueprint to organize elections.

Banny was chosen to serve with Gbagbo, whose mandate was extended for up to a year under the peace plan after scheduled elections failed to take place last October.

Attacks against U.N.

At Guiglo, the protesters forced their way into a base belonging to Bangladeshi U.N. peacekeepers, U.N. officials said.

In Abidjan, about 300 protesters gathered for a second day outside U.N. mission headquarters, burning tires, shouting and dancing as Ivorian police kept them back. U.N. anti-riot forces guarded their headquarters from behind a closed gate.

U.N. sources told Reuters a U.N. convoy taking staff to its Abidjan headquarters was attacked by youths pelting rocks at their cars. Four vehicles were damaged, but no one was injured.

Diplomats said demonstrators who had gathered outside the French Embassy on Monday were still there on Tuesday.

U.N. mission chief Pierre Schori was due to meet Gbagbo on Tuesday to discuss the situation.

The French Embassy said protests had spread to several upcountry towns including the political capital Yamoussoukro and to towns in the western cocoa belt and San Pedro, from where shipments of cocoa are exported.

In the western town of Daloa, police fired tear gas at demonstrators outside U.N. offices. Protestors looted the homes of U.N. civilian staff and destroyed six U.N. cars there on Monday, a U.N. worker said.

Margherita Amodeo, spokeswoman for the U.N. mission, said U.N. police offices in San Pedro had been razed by protestors on Monday but no staff had been injured.

The disturbances in Abidjan forced some cocoa exporting companies to close their offices on Monday, and several said they would keep their staff at home again on Tuesday.

Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

 
 
 
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