PARIS (AFP) - In an attempt to ease tensions in the Ivory Coast, France has opted not to point the finger of blame at President Laurent Gbagbo for the violence that has roiled the country in the past week.
Rebels in the north of the country accused Gbagbo of leading the country back to the brink of civil war, but French chief of staff General Henri Bentegeat said Friday he was not convinced the Ivorian president gave the order for an aerial attack on a French base a week ago in which nine French soldiers and an American civilian were killed.
That would have been "insane," Bentegeat said.
The subsequent action by France in destroying much of the Ivory Coast's tiny air force touched off an angry anti-French backlash and led to a exodus of foreigners as pro-Gbagbo mobs ran riotin the largest city, Abidjan.
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has said France was convinced the air strike was deliberate but would conduct an inquiry to find out at what level the decision to attack was taken.
She said it could have been decided by a local commander or even the pilot.
"It was such an act of madness that it does not appear logical that the Ivorian head of state could have made such a decision," Alliot-Marie told France Info radio.
Foreign Minister Michel Barnier on Saturday echoed Alliot-Marie's statement, saying: "We have said it was a deliberate attack... but we don't know at what level the order for the attack was given," said Barnier.
"Ivory Coast remains a friendly country," he insisted.
In disengaging itself from its armlock with the Ivorian authorities, France is seeking a way of getting the derailed process of national reconciliation back on the track.
Ivory Coast has been locked in a low-level civil war since rebels launched a failed bid in September 2002 to oust Gbagbo.
In January last year, France brokered a peace pact in Marcoussis, a suburb of Paris, which was supposed to bring the rebels and political opposition into a unity government, and see Ggagbo cede some of his powers to a prime minister.
But that pact, too, sparked anti-French riots by the same hardline Gbagbo supporters responsible for the violence of the past week, and has still not been fully implemented, leaving Ivory Coast divided into the rebel north and pro-Gbagbo south.
A precarious calm has returned to Abidjan, but foreigners continued to flee following reports of machete attacks, rapes and pillaging by the mobs.
By Saturday, 2,410 French nationals had been airlifted out of the country, and more than 4,100 expatriates from 63 countries had registered at the French military base near Abidjan, awaiting evacuation, a French military spokesman said.
Diplomats hope that France can assist the international efforts to restore peace, which include a summit meeting of the African Union in Abuja, Nigeria on Sunday.
Paris hopes the summit will devise a regional solution ahead of a vote in the UN Security Council on a French-proposed resolution that would impose an arms embargo and other sanctions on the Ivory Coast unless the situation improves within a month.
A month's delay in imposing sanctions would allow time for reflection by the warring sides, and by the international community, the spokesman for the foreign ministry in Paris, Herve Ladsous, said.
"The aim is to give the Security Council a supplementary tool," he said, adding that the events of the past week had shown the need to reinforce support for the political process aimed at uniting and disarming the divided nation.
France is also trying to involve neighboring countries in west Africa in an attempt to restore peace in what used to be the region's driving economy, warning that the entire region could flare up if Ivory Coast is destabilized.
Ladsous said Ivory Coast's neighbors need to "examine their consciences" and engage more actively in working for order and peace.
Diplomats have said the potential for conflict is getting greater as fighters and weapons move freely across Ivory Coast's borders.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's representative for west Africa, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, has said he was concerned by the possibility that the conflict will overflow and cause "incalculable damage" in the volatile region.
11/13/2004 - 13:30 GMT - AFP