Loyalists stick to anti-French protest plans

Abidjan, Ivory Coast - Ivory Coast's loyalist hard-liners refused on Tuesday to call off an anti-French protest outside a major French army base here, despite government appeals for calm.

Wednesday's planned rally, after a week of relative quiet in the war-divided West African nation, threatened a return to anti-French rampages that have sent thousands of foreigners fleeing France's one-time colonial base.

"We want to express how we feel," Nazigue Konate, youth leader for President Laurent Gbagbo's party, said late on Tuesday. "So the rally will be held."

Loyalists earlier had announced a week of anti-French protests in Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast - the world's leading cocoa producer.

Loyalists had announced a week of anti- French protests Loyalist youth leaders, expressing resentment at patrols by some of the 3,000 French troops deployed in Ivory Coast, on Monday urged followers to attack and burn French military vehicles now patrolling the streets of the West African economic hub. Protests in past weeks saw rioters loot French businesses and attack fleeing French nationals.

France says its troops are protecting foreigners and trying to enforce cease-fires in the 5-month-old civil war in Ivory Coast.

Since launching the uprising September 19, rebels fighting to oust Ggagbo have seized half the country - all of the north, and parts of the cocoa-and coffee-rich west.

Both sides in the civil war are expressing increasing bitterness against the French.

Rebels claim that French forces are the only real barrier to their advance on Abidjan.

Loyalists blame the French for a January 24 peace deal that they say gives too much power to rebels. The French-brokered deal was signed after two weeks of talks outside Paris.

Following the violent anti-French rampages in past weeks, Ivory Coast's Interior Ministry on Tuesday urged restraint by loyalists.

Loyalists declared later on Tuesday they would go ahead with Wednesday's protest outside the French military base in Abidjan, but left open the possibility they might cancel their days of scheduled anti-French protests to follow.

France helped mediate the January 24 peace deal for Ivory Coast that calls for rebels, the government, and opposition parties to share power until 2005 elections. Rebels have claimed the deal gives them control of Ivory Coast's security forces. The claim has outraged loyalists.

Seydou Diarra, prime minister under the new power- sharing accord, headed to France on Tuesday for a summit of African and French leaders.

Diarra, nominal head of a power-sharing government that has yet to be realised, would seek to explain Gbagbo's position on the peace deal, presidential aides said.

Gbagbo, under pressure from hard-liners, gave mixed support to the January 24 deal last week.

Ivory Coast is one of Africa's economic centres, accounting for 40 percent of the gross production of former French West Africa. It stood for decades as an anchor of peace and prosperity in turbulent West Africa.

The civil war erupted on September 19 with a failed coup attempt. Rebels behind the attempt accused Gbagbo of fanning ethnic hatreds after the country's first-ever coup in 1999. - Sapa-AP

France tried to sell out the loyalists and thrust a "government of national unity" upon the parties, without regard to popular will.

Are the French acting within parameters set by the U.N.? One could view this as bullying with more than a touch of arrogance.

Of course the French would have large business interests here. Not to accuse the French of putting business over the interests of other nations.

That is not tooting the Horn to Big if you will.

That is like having the "Virgin Islands" do ads for Homeland Security.

They say that all Drug murders in the South can be declared terror.

THe only problem with that is those countries have been commie/drug support for decades I was in the gorrilla countries as a child and it was not commies against democracy that I witmessed it was a Dictatorship vs the commie/gorrillas the gorillas being the ones who chose but my elders never had the choice of Democracy. Thus my mother who adopted me came bylegal ship a three month journey to US

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