The World Bank has frozen funds for Ivory Coast amid escalating tension between Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara.
|||Paris/Abidjan - France asked its citizens to leave Ivory Coast and the World Bank froze funding to the West African state on Wednesday, as a violent power struggle deepened between incumbent Laurent Gbagbo and his rival presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara.
Gbagbo has refused to quit following a November 28 election that African countries and Western powers say he lost to Ouattara, in a dispute that has already killed 50 people and threatens to rekindle a civil war.
A key Ouattara aide said the “only solution” to the crisis was for the international community to consider using force to oust Gbagbo.
“We ask those who can to leave Ivory Coast temporarily until the situation normalises,” French government spokesperson Francois Baroin told reporters in Paris. There are now about 13 000 French nationals in the former French colony.
Germany and Britain advised against travel to the country and urged their citizens there to leave, a day after Nigeria said it evacuated diplomatic staff from the country following an attack on its embassy.
World Bank head Robert Zoellick said funds for Ivory Coast had been cut off, a move to squeeze Gbagbo financially. According to the World Bank website, the global lender has aid commitments to Ivory Coast of $842-million as of January 2010.
“They have already been frozen,” Zoellick said in Paris after a meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A World Bank statement added: “The World Bank and the African Development Bank have supported Ecowas and the African Union in sending the message to President Gbagbo that he lost the elections and he needs to step down.
The European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on Gbagbo and members of his inner circle in an attempt to force him to go, and African countries have offered him a soft landing in exile.
But Gbagbo has shown no sign of caving in to the pressure and on Tuesday he invited an international committee to re-examine the results of the vote, a move that a Ouattara spokesperson dismissed as a delaying tactic.
“For the past five years he tried manoeuvres to postpone the elections. Finally we got there, he lost, and he doesn't want to give up power,” Patrick Achi, a spokesperson for Ouattara's rival government, told reporters by telephone on Wednesday.
The prime minister of Ouattara's rival government, Guillaume Soro, said on French news network i-Tele on Wednesday that the United Nations and other world bodies should consider toppling Gbagbo by force if diplomatic measures fail.
The turmoil in the world's top cocoa-producing country has boosted cocoa prices to recent four-month highs, disrupting export registrations and raising the spectre that fighting could block transport and shipping. - Reuters
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