Tensions ease as Young Patriots call end to anti-UN protests

The leader of Cote d’Ivoire’s Young Patriots, a youth group supporting President Laurent Gbagbo, late Thursday called on its members who have led four days of violent anti-UN demonstrations to pack up their roadblocks and go home. “Everybody get off the streets, we’re going to lift the roadblocks,” Charles Ble Goude told members who had gathered outside the French Embassy since Monday. Ble Goude was due to repeat his message on national television and radio. Meanwhile in New York, the UN Security Council expressed "deep concern" over the situation but stopped short of slapping individual sanctions against Ivorian leaders. A statement from the 15-nation body "underlines that targeted measues will be imposed" against those blocking the peace process or inciting violence. Ble Goude’s call follows Gbagbo’s appeal for calm issued late on Wednesday. The president’s appeal went unheeded by many protesters in the main city Abidjan where roadblocks remained and stone-throwing youths continued to target UN facilities on Thursday morning. However, by the end of the day, crowds at the French embassy began to disperse and the violence that had gripped the southwestern town of San Pedro as well as Guiglo and Daloa in the west had fizzled, according to UN military spokesman Gilles Combarieu. By sunset, large crowds remained outside ONUCI headquarters in Abidjan, Cambarieu said, though they had not yet heard Ble Goude’s message. However, the possibility for overnight violence remained in the poor northern Abidjan suburb of Abobo, Mayor Adama Toungara warned. Local traders who had wanted to go to work on Wednesday but were prevented by Young Patriots led to clashes in which four people died, Toungara told IRIN. At nightfall, gangs of youths armed with clubs were still roaming the streets, he said. “If those people don’t leave the streets then I don’t know what’s going to happen tonight, we have to do something,” Toungara said. Cote d’Ivoire has been divided between a government-controlled south and a rebel-held north since a failed coup in September 2002. Some 6,000 UN peacekeepers and 4,000 French troops maintain a shaky peace. But the UN operation has come in for repeated condemnation from Gbagbo’s supporters, with the latest eruption stemming from a decision by UN-appointed mediators -- the International Working Group -- who said that the mandate of parliament, which is packed with Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party members, ran out last month. The pro-Gbagbo militants took to the streets in protest and the ruling FPI on Tuesday announced that it was quitting the peace process and pulling its seven members from a transitional government. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo flew in for talks late on Wednesday. After a three-hour meeting Obasanjo, Gbagbo and new Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, issued a statement saying: “The working group does not have the power to dissolve the national assembly...the working group has not dissolved the national assembly.” Young Patriots members welcomed the news. “We are happy because the International Working Group does not have the power to dissolve parliament. That was the reason we took to the streets,” an unnamed Ble Goude aide told IRIN. As tensions eased in Cote d’Ivoire, the UN Security Council was to continue talks over the coming days and diplomats said a decision on increasing the size of the UN peacekeeping force or on possible sanctions could take some time. The UN on Wednesday condemned the use of “hate media” to incite violence in Cote d’Ivoire. The practice is “unacceptable and must cease immediately,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement. In the western town of Daloa radio equipment was trashed after journalists refused to call people out onto the streets to demonstrate outside a UN peacekeeping base there On Tuesday UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed "deep concern" at the situation in Cote d'Ivoire, condemning the "orchestrated violence directed against the United Nations, the population, as well as the inactions of some national authorities in responding to the situation." The fresh hostilities caused alarm over the border in Liberia where a 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping operation, UNMIL, is in place. UNMIL chief, Alan Doss, told reporters on Wednesday that the mission was assessing whether to fortify border security to prevent arms flooding into Liberia.