U.N.: Ivory Coast leader Gbagbo’s top generals offer to halt fighting
Gallery: Ivory Coast: Civil war deepens: U.N. peacekeepers and French troops launched military operations against loyalists of longtime strongman Laurent Gbagbo on Monday.
UNITED NATIONS — Ivory Coast strongman Laurent Gbagbo’s top three generals have offered to halt fighting, surrender their weapons and seek protection from U.N. peacekeepers, the United Nations said Tuesday. 
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Video: Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, who has refused to step down, was reported to be negotiating his surrender after international forces attacked his stronghold. (April 5)
“We are on the brink of convincing him to leave power,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told parliament in Paris, Reuters news service reported.
“The military battle is over,” said Youssoufou Bamba, the U.N. envoy for Gbagbo’s rival, president-elect Alassane Ouattara. Gbagbo’s forces “have no ammunition, and they are surrendering. I understand they are now negotiating the terms of the surrender” with the French government, he said.
“For our part, we want Gbago’s military to surrender without conditions,” Bamba said in a telephone interview.
But Zakaria Fellah, a foreign policy adviser to Gbagbo, said that the Ivorian strongman “is not negotiating anything. This is a fight to the end for him, his wife and what you guys call his hard line-supporters.”
Fellah said he spoke Tuesday morning to Gbagbo’s wife, Simone, who is sheltered with her husband in a bunker at the family residence, where there is no electricity or access to the outside world. “They are living in a bunker. She said, and I’m quoting, ‘It would be a beautiful end.’ I don’t know what it means but I think they are ready to die.”
The Associated Press reported that forces loyal to Ouattara had seized Gbagbo’s residence, citing a senior diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Zakaria said he believed that the “hard-core” followers of Gbagbo would continue fighting, but that they faced such an onslaught of “overwhelming firepower” from France, the U.N. and Ouattara’s forces that it would be impossible to “turn the tide of the outcome. Mathematically, the game is over.”
President Obama said Tuesday he strongly supported the French-backed U.N. military operation against Gbagbo’s forces.
Obama said the United States is concerned “about reports of massacres in the western region of the country, and the dangers faced by innocent civilians.” The U.N. has accused forces loyal to Ouattara and Gbagbo of carrying out mass killings in the western town of Douekoue.
Obama urged both sides in the conflict to exercise restraint and welcomed a pledge by Ouattara “to ensure accountability for those who have carried out attacks against civilians.” Ouattara’s camp has denied massacring civilians.
The three top Gbagbo loyalist generals who offered to stop fighting were Gen. Philippe Mangou, chief of staff of the Security Defense Forces; Gen. Thiape Kassarate Edouard, the top commander of the national gendarmerie; and Gen. Bruno Dogbo Ble, commander of the Republican Guard.
“The U.N. received telephone calls from three high-ranking officials that an order to cease fire was being given to elements in the Security Defense Forces, including the special forces,” according to a U.N. statement released Tuesday. “The order was alo given to surrender weapons to UNOCI [the U.N. Mission in Ivory Coast] and seek protection from its forces.”
The statement says the U.N. mission has ordered its own troops to take weapons from Gbagbo’s forces when they are surrendered and to offer protection to disarmed soldiers.
The developments follow military operations Monday by U.N. peacekeepers and French troops against Gbagbo’s loyalists in a significant escalation of force that effectively placed peacekeepers on one side of the West African country’s deepening civil war.
The United Nations and France authorized helicopter gunships to target key installations and heavy-weapons sites after days of attacks by Gbagbo loyalists on peacekeepers and civilians, according to U.N. officials.
Two U.N. Mi-24 helicopters, piloted by Ukrainian peacekeepers, attacked two military bases controlled by Gbagbo’s forces. U.N. officials said French forces targeted heavy weaponry near the presidential palace and residence in Abidjan, as well as other installations under Gbagbo’s control.
The attacks marked a dramatic development in the international community’s efforts to force Gbagbo from power and provided a boost to Ivorian forces backing Gbagbo’s political rival Ouattara, who is widely recognized as the winner of the country’s Nov. 28 presidential election.
Monday’s attacks also represented a rare instance in which the United Nations has used force against a conventional army.
In a statement, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations was engaging in a limited military operation taken “in self defense and to protect” civilians. The operation, he said, did not constitute a decision by the United Nations to become “a party to the conflict” in Ivory Coast.
Nonetheless, the use of the 9,000-member U.N. peacekeeping mission for offensive operations raised the possibility that it could get drawn deeper into a civil war, particularly if the Ivorian conflict is protracted. Hundreds of people have already been killed and up to 1 million have fled the violence. On Monday, a coalition of fighters loyal to Ouattara was massing on the edge of the commercial capital, Abidjan, suggesting the worst fighting might be yet to come.
Ban requested French support for a military operation Sunday, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy informed Ban that he had “authorized French force ... to participate in these joint operations.”
“I, like you, believe that protecting civilians threatened in Cote d’Ivoire is an urgent necessity,” Sarkozy said in a letter released Monday.
France, the former colonial power in Ivory Coast, seized control of the country’s key airport, near Abidjan, on Sunday and has reinforced its military presence in the country with 400 additional troops, bringing its total number to nearly 1,500.
The military offensive marked a rare show of lethal force by the United Nations. In the past decade, the United Nations has carried out what it calls “robust peacekeeping” — essentially offensive military operations — in Sierra Leone, Congo and Haiti.
In Ivory Coast, the U.N. mandate gives peacekeepers broad authority to use force to protect civilians and support the peace process, but it does not authorize them to take sides in the country’s conflict.
lynchc@washpost.com
