UN will not tolerate more violence, Annan warns

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Wednesday warned both the president and army chief of staff of Cote d’Ivoire that they would be held personally responsible in the case of renewed attacks on UN staff or installations. “The Secretary-General is deeply concerned about reported threats against United Nations personnel in Côte d’Ivoire, and the possibility of major violence being unleashed in Abidjan and other areas,” Annan’s spokesman said in a statement released in New York. Around 400 UN staff were evacuated from Cote d’Ivoire to Gambia and Senegal last week as consensus mounted within the UN Security Council on slapping sanctions against Ivorian leaders seen as whipping up violence and blocking peace efforts. UN vehicles and facilities were torched and ransacked and hundreds of peacekeepers forced to retreat in four days of anti-UN protests a fortnight ago that were unleashed by youth protesters who support President Laurent Gbagbo. The unprecedented violence against the 7,000-strong peacekeeping mission in Cote d’Ivoire, tasked with ending three years of conflict between Gbagbo and rebels who control the northern half of the country, has bolstered moves to adopt individual sanctions, such as travel bans and asset freezes. The statement added that: “the Secretary-General wishes to remind, in the strongest possible terms, the highest civilian and military authorities of Côte d’Ivoire, including President Gbagbo and Chief of Staff General Mangou, of their personal responsibility for preventing violence, including attacks targeted against United Nations personnel and installations throughout the country, as well as ethnically motivated violence. “Such acts will not be tolerated by the international community.” A diplomatic source said a decision on sanctions was expected in the coming days. Those evacuated so far are non-essential staff who make up about 20 percent of the 2,000 staff working for the UN and UN humanitarian agencies in Cote d’Ivoire. Following the riots, humanitarian aid to thousands of refugees and displaced people has been sharply cut back in the volatile western region. The latest voice in a chorus of anti-UN sentiment was that of the influential speaker of the Ivorian parliament, Mamadou Koulibaly, who said in a newspaper interview released on Wednesday that far from helping bring peace to Cote d’Ivoire, the United Nations peacekeeping force was instead contributing to friction. “Initially convened to be a solution to the Ivorian crisis, the presence of the UN has become a part of the Ivorian conflict,” Koulibaly said in the pro-government daily, Le Courrier. And last weekend, Charles Ble Goude, leader of the Young Patriots movement who called the anti-UN protests, issued a deadline to the interim government put together to work towards peace. He said his supporters would be back on the streets if Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny failed to produce a timetable to disarm the rebels within two weeks.