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Ivory Coast braces for more fighting
( 2002-10-09 10:08 ) (7 )

Ivory Coast braced for more fighting Wednesday as rebels strengthened positions in their stronghold and President Laurent Gbagbo told them he would only talk if they dropped their guns.

Rebels of the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast held most of the north after a three-week-long uprising that has left hundreds dead and raised fears of full-blown civil war.

Loyalist forces launched a major offensive at the weekend after Gbagbo rejected West African proposals, backed by former colonial power France, for a cease-fire that would have frozen front lines and left the rebels with their guns.

Gbagbo said that to talk to the rebels before they disarmed would mean giving them legitimacy and could encourage similar movements across the continent.

"Our states our fragile. We do not have the right to make them more so," he said in his second national address since a failed September 19 coup that has grown into a rebellion.

Without going into detail, Gbagbo said he was willing to consider new peace proposals he had been offered by the region.

After beating off two days of heavy assaults, rebels on Tuesday strengthened their positions in Bouake, Ivory Coast's biggest city after the coastal commercial hub of Abidjan, 225 miles to the south.

Military sources said government troops, who punched through to the city center with armored vehicles Monday before drawing back, could soon be expected to launch a new attack on Bouake.

The insurrection has left well over 300 dead and heightened ethnic tension in the polarized country of 16 million, a quarter of whom are immigrants who came to what was once a haven of stability and prosperity in a troubled region.

COUNTRY SPLIT

The army holds the mainly Christian south, where people from Gbagbo's Bete and other tribes are heavily opposed to any cease-fire deal with the rebels who hold the Muslim north, from where many of them originate.

Fears of spreading turmoil in the world's biggest cocoa producer and the arrival of rebel fighters on the edge of a key farming region have kept prices for the beans used to make chocolate around 16-year highs.

Gbagbo made a particular appeal to Ivorians not to use the conflict as a reason to attack foreigners, who form the backbone of the labor force in cocoa-producing regions.

Ivory Coast has repeatedly said the rebels are getting support from unnamed neighbors -- widely assumed to include Burkina Faso, home of most of the immigrants.

Thousands of immigrants' shacks in shanty towns have been destroyed since the failed coup, triggering fears of huge movements of people and potentially the involvement of neighboring countries.

"I want to tell Ivorians that the foreigners are not our problem right now. Our fight is a fight to free our country and not to attack foreigners," he said. "Do not attack foreigners."

Gbagbo made a particular appeal to Ivorians not to attack the French, targeted by many of his supporters for sheltering opposition leader Alassane Ouattara in their embassy after what he calls an attempt on his life by the security forces.

France has given what it describes as logistical support to the army and has more than 1,000 troops in its former colony to protect foreigners, but has added its weight to calls for a cease-fire. About 20,000 French citizens live in Ivory Coast.

Some of the rebels are angry at being pushed out of the army. But they have also said they want new elections to replace a poll won by Gbagbo two years ago amid a wave of ethnic bloodshed after Ouattara was barred.