Top UN envoy: Ivory Coast vote has 1 winner

[December 08, 2010]  ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- The top U.N. envoy in Ivory Coast says the opposition candidate won the country's disputed election by an "irrefutable margin."

The comments from U.N. envoy Choi Young-jin on Wednesday come as the international community steps up pressure on incumbent Laurent Gbagbo to concede defeat.

Gbagbo defied those calls Tuesday and appointed a cabinet. The man he chose as foreign minister said he thinks the election dispute will result in a power-sharing agreement.

But Choi told a room full of diplomats in Abidjan that "the people have chosen one person, not two."

Opposition leader Alassane Ouattara also has gone ahead and taken the oath of office. The United States and France also maintain he is the rightful winner.

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THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE.
AP's earlier story is below.

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ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- The foreign minister appointed by Ivory Coast's incumbent president who refuses to step down said he thinks the political crisis will end in a unity government, though the U.N. maintained there was only one winner -- the opposition candidate.

"This will finish in a power-sharing arrangement," Alcide Djedje said late Tuesday, hours after he joined Laurent Gbagbo's cabinet. The international community says Alassane Ouattara won the poll. Both men have taken oaths of office and formed governments in the West African nation.

Such signs of rapprochement, while encouraging, are surprising coming from Djedje, who days earlier publicly threatened to expel the country's United Nations representative on national television. He said if U.N. envoy Choi Young-jin continued to call Ouattara the winner, he would be asked to leave the country.

Choi told the U.N. Security Council late Tuesday that there was "only one winner" of the recent presidential election -- Ouattara -- and urged the U.N. to take action against Gbagbo to safeguard the result of the vote.

Also Tuesday, a regional bloc of 15 countries in West Africa suspended Ivory Coast's membership and warned Gbagbo to yield power immediately to Ouattara.

But Djedje noted that while Ouattara has international support, Gbagbo holds power locally. Gbagbo retains exclusive access to the presidential palace, state television and is believed to control the security forces.

"The calls by (U.S. President Barack) Obama and (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy to support Ouattara -- what does this give him on the ground?" Djedje said. "Nothing!"

It is unclear what the international community can do if Gbagbo refuses to step down. If he does not go voluntarily, removing Gbagbo would require a military intervention since he appears to have the backing of his own army.

But Ouattara's camp said it believed international pressure would erode Gbagbo's authority.

"You can't exist in a globalized world totally isolated and looking inward," said Ouattara spokesman Patrick Achi, who is also the minister of infrastructure. "Each day that passes, the pressure mounts more on them than it does on us."

He said the Ouattara campaign planned to exercise its power to recall Gbagbo's ambassadors and replace them.

Once considered an African success story, Ivory Coast's economy was destroyed by the 2002-2003 civil war. Gbagbo, who was president when the war broke out, failed to hold elections in 2005 when his term expired because armed rebels still controlled the northern half of the country. The country remained in political deadlock, with repeated outbursts of fighting, until 2007, when a deal was signed by all the parties paving the way for the election.

In the three years that followed, the ballot was rescheduled at least six times, with Gbagbo complaining over technicalities regarding the voter roll and the makeup of the electoral commission.

The standoff has many worried that Ivory Coast may return to war. For several nights, residents in pro-Ouattara neighborhoods say they heard sporadic shooting and at least 20 people have been shot to death since the contested election, according to Amnesty International.

[Associated Press]

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