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African leaders meet to discuss Ivory Coast crisis
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-11-14 11:09

West African leaders meet in Nigeria on Sunday to discuss a deepening crisis in Ivory Coast, one of the region's former economic powerhouses where a week of unrest has caused some 5,000 expatriates to flee.

A family arrives from Abidjan at the Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris. Hundreds of frightened Europeans continued to flee the Ivory Coast. [AFP]

Heads of state from Gabon, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Libya, Nigeria and Senegal are due to attend the emergency summit. Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo is also on the list, but aides have said there is little chance he will be there.

Gbagbo sacked his army chief of staff late on Saturday, replacing him with Colonel Philippe Mangou, the former chief of army operations who oversaw an assault on the rebel-held north just over a week ago which shattered an 18-month cease-fire.

"It is simply a matter of allowing the promotion of new elites in the army," presidential spokesman Desire Tagro said on state television.

Ivorian forces killed nine French peacekeepers in a bombing raid on a French base on Nov. 6. France responded by crippling the state's air force, which triggered violence against French citizens and other foreigners, including rapes, machete attacks and looting.

Around 800 French citizens and other foreigners sheltering in a French military base in the city were due to fly back to Paris on Sunday, the latest of thousands quitting a nation that was once a model of post-independence prosperity.

The world's top cocoa grower has been plagued by violence since rebels bent on ousting Gbagbo seized the north two years ago. More than 10,000 French and United Nations peacekeepers are deployed in the country to keep the two sides apart.

General Henri Poncet, head of the French troops in Ivory Coast, said the situation had improved considerably for now and that he hoped stability would return, but said French soldiers would remain in the country with reinforcements nearby.

"The international community's concern is avoiding the whole country erupting into violence and the situation developing into an inter-ethnic bloodbath," he said late on Saturday.

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