Government arrests 20 for plotting assassination of president

President Laurent Gbagbo said in a televised broadcast to the nation on Tuesday night that several people had been arrested in Cote d'Ivoire and France for planning to assassinate him and several of his aides. A government source told IRIN that 20 people had been detained in Cote d'Ivoire since Saturday for questioning about their suspected involvement in the plot. France said on Monday that it had arrested several people who were planning to use mercenaries to destabilise Cote d'Ivoire. The former French colony in West Africa is edging back towards normality following the outbreak of a civil war in September last year. A French diplomat in Abidjan told IRIN that the French authorities had arrested 11 people, including Master Sargent Ibrahim Coulibaly, a key figure in the 1999 coup that brought to power the short-lived military government of Colonel Robert Guei. Gbagbo said: "The Ivorian intelligence services, in perfect collaboration with their French counterparts, informed me of a planned terrorist action aimed at overthrowing our institutions. This plan was particularly aimed at taking my own life and assassinating my principal colleagues." The president said the joint action of the French and Ivorian intelligence services had led to "the simultaneous interception in Cote d'Ivoire and France of people who are involved in this terrorist action." The Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI), the rebel movement which still controls the north of the country, immediately disassociated itself from the alleged plot. The MPCI said it remained fully commited to the implementation of a peace agreement signed in January. This led to the creation of a government of national reconciliation in March and an end to fighting shortly afterwards. However, distrust between the rebels, now officially known as "The New Forces" and President Gbagbo, still runs deep. Plans for the rebels to demobilise and disarm and allow government administrators back into the territory they control are running several weeks behind schedule. Matters were not helped when drunken rebel fighters shot dead two French soldiers on Monday as they patrolled the buffer zone between government and rebel forces near the central town of Sakassou. The rebels were not supposed to be carrying arms in the demilitarised zone which is controlled by 4000 French peacekeeping troops and 1,300 soldiers from five West African countries. The MPCI subsequently apologised for the incident. The French diplomat confirmed Ivorian newspaper reports that identified some of those arrested in France as Ibrahim Coulibaly, Mamadou Diomande, a lawyer who serves as the MPCI's spokesman in Europe, and Assane Farouk Fakhr, a Lebanese resident in Cote d'Ivoire who is thought to have financed the plot to assassinate Gbagbo The diplomat said the other people arrested in France included former members of the French Foreign Legion from Germany, Corsica, Tonga and the French Pacific island of New Caledonia.