The presidents of Sierra Leone, Benin and Cape Verde arrived in Abidjan, and are due to meet with Gbagbo at the presidential palace after first speaking with the top UN envoy in Ivory Coast.
The UN was tasked with certifying the results of the election as part of a peace agreement that ended a 2002-2003 civil war. The UN declared that Ouattara won the runoff held one month ago but Gbagbo refuses to concede defeat.
“We are leaving today and returning today after discussions with Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast and we are sure of getting positive results,” Sierra Leone’s information and communication minister Ibrahim Ben Kargbo said Tuesday.
UN helicopters were to later fly the delegation to the Golf Hotel to meet with Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognized winner of the runoff election held one month ago. The United States, the European Union and the African Union have also pressured Gbagbo to step down.
The regional bloc ECOWAS has threatened to use “legitimate force” if Gbagbo does not relinquish power.
Ouattara’s camp has been confident in recent days that such help is coming.
“It’s not a bluff,” one senior Ouattara adviser said Monday on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. “The soldiers are coming much faster than anyone thinks.” ECOWAS has intervened in past disputes, including the seizing of Sierra Leone’s capital in 1998 that forced military junta leaders to flee and allowed an elected president to return to power. ECOWAS also intervened in Liberia in 1990 and its forces stayed for several years, and it sent troops to Guinea Bissau.
Some analysts feel an ECOWAS mission in Ivory Coast would entail a full-scale invasion, causing numerous civilian casualties.
Weeks of postelection violence have left at least 173 people dead, according to the UN The toll is believed to be much higher. The UN said it has been unable to investigate reports of a mass grave because of restrictions on UN personnel movements.
The French government says its forces in Ivory Coast will protect French citizens but won’t be making any decisions about an international military intervention.
Many Ivorians are terrified of Gbagbo’s security forces.
Human rights groups blame security forces associated with Gbagbo for hundreds of arrests and dozens of cases of torture and disappearances since the election. A Gbagbo adviser has said he does not believe his supporters could be behind the violence.
Gbagbo has been in power since 2000 and had already overstayed his mandate by five years when the long-delayed presidential election was finally held in October, with the runoff coming in November. The election was intended to help reunify a country that was divided by the civil war into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south.
While Ivory Coast was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal, Ouattara still draws his support from the northern half of the country, where residents feel they are often treated as foreigners within their own country by southerners.
