African leaders back Ivory Coast arms embargo

AFRICAN leaders have backed an arms embargo and other immediate UN sanctions against Ivory Coast, isolating President Laurent Gbagbo’s hard-line government even further in its deadly confrontation with its former colonial ruler, France.

As a French-led evacuation of Ivory Coast builds to one of Africa’s largest, French President Jacques Chirac denounced Mr Gbagbo’s “questionable regime” - and said France would not tolerate much more. Presidents from Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo and Gabon, meeting in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, yesterday backed a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for an arms embargo, a travel ban and asset freezes against anyone blocking peace in Ivory Coast.

The arms embargo “should be immediate,” Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo - the African Union chairman - told journalists after the meeting at the presidential wing of Abuja’s airport.

The call gives African approval to a tough stand in today’s expected Security Council vote on the sanctions. Mr Gbagbo’s representative at the talks, parliamentary leader Mamadou Koulibaly, condemned the call for sanctions, and complained African leaders had slighted him - barring him from most of the talks, and even dinner. No other African leaders “are capable of resolving our problems with France,” Mr Koulibaly said.

One of his aides, speaking on condition he not be identified, warned that other countries should “come and collect their foreigners from Ivory Coast - because if there’s an embargo we can’t live with them anymore.”