The world’s top cocoa grower is locked in a dispute over a Nov. 28 presidential vote that both Gbagbo and rival Alassane Ouattara claim to have won, Ouattara with backing from foreign governments and the UN Security Council.

A top aide of Gbagbo’s said late on Saturday he would never step down and accused Western powers of attempting a “recolonization” of the West African state, by installing their “puppet.”

Election commission results showed Ouattara won by around eight percent. But Gbagbo claims victory with backing from the Constitutional Council, headed by a key ally, which erased nearly half a million votes in Ouattara strongholds, alleging fraud.

The United Nations, former colonial power France, the United States, the European Union, the African Union and West African regional bloc ECOWAS have all urged Gbagbo to admit defeat and accept an offer of exile.

“That is unimaginable,” Gbagbo aide Pascal Affi N’Guessan told Reuters in an interview.

“Everyone involved in this crisis needs to exclude this hypothesis of Gbagbo leaving from their schemes.”

Ouattara has said he is only willing to talk to Gbagbo if he steps aside.

Gbagbo’s government said on state TV it wanted the UN peacekeeping and French forces out of the country, accusing them of interfering in Ivory Coast’s internal affairs, after the UN envoy recogised Ouattara.


UN Secretary-General Ban ki-moon responded with his own statement issued by UN spokesman Farhan Haq, who made clear the force had no intention of pulling out. Diplomats said he had no authority to kick them out as he lost the poll.

“We consider this intolerable interference in our affairs,” N’Guessan said. “It obeys their interests to side with Ouattara. We consider this a conspiracy ... even a recolonization.”

The UN mission includes some 10,000 soldiers and police, and is supported by the French LICORNE force. Hundreds of peacekeepers have been deployed to defend Ouattara’s makeshift headquarters in Abidjan’s lagoon-side Golf Hotel.

At least 20 people were killed on Thursday in clashes between pro-Ouattara marchers and security forces. Former rebels supporting Ouattara also briefly exchanged fire with government soldiers.

Gbagbo is a master at whipping up xenophobic nationalism against the French and portraying international pressure on him as a Western neo-imperialist plot. He has often called Ouattara “candidate for the foreigners” — a reference both to his love of France and suspicion that he is originally from Burkina Faso.

“We said before the elections that Mr. Ouattara was the candidate for the foreigners. Everything that’s happened since shows he was on a mission for foreign interests not for Ivory Coast,” N’Guessan said.