ABIDJAN (AFP) - Ivory Coast woke to a national holiday after a weekend of diplomacy by African leaders fearful of a return to war in the divided state, and awaiting a vote by the UN Security Council likely to impose sanctions including an arms embargo.
Rhetoric between the world's top cocoa producer and its former colonial power France, meanwhile, flew fast and furious, with President Laurent Gbagbo blasting his French counterpart Jacques Chirac for an "insult" that France will remain in Ivory Coast and respond to prevent a decline into anarchy or fascism.
Flights carrying the stream of foreigners hurrying to abandon the former west African economic powerhouse continued for sixth straight day, with a 270-passenger plane expected to lift off by midmorning.
French military spokesman Colonel Henry Aussavy told AFP that as of Sunday night more than 5,000 people had escaped Ivory Coast, the vast majority aboard planes chartered by the French government to evacuate its 14,000 nationals from its former star colony in west Africa.
Split between rebel north and government south since a failed coup launched a civil war in September 2002, Ivory Coast tumbled deeper into chaos on November 4 with a series of government air strikes on key rebel strongholds in a major violation of an 18-month-old ceasefire.
A raid on November 6 in the central town of Bouake, the second city in the country of 17 million, hit a French military base in an attack that French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier has called "deliberate," killing nine French troops and a US aid worker.
In an immediate riposte, France wiped out virtually the entire modest air force, which sent tens of thousands of angry Gbagbo partisans into the streets for a week of vandalism and violence that destroyed Abidjan, one of Africa's most sophisticated and modern cities.
Dozens of foreign women were raped and dozens more expatriates injured, some of them with blows from machetes, military officials have said. Two French nationals are still missing, though no fatalities have been confirmed among the expatriate population.
On the Ivorian side, competing tolls from various government sources have reported between 22 and 64 deaths in the days of clashes between the so-called "patriots" and French troops patrolling the streets of the commercial capital.
The patriots on Sunday held the second of two concerts to memorialize their slain comrades, wrapping up the sessions by Ivorian artists at dawn Monday without incident.
Gbagbo's regional counterparts sent him a stern message Sunday during an African Union summit in the Nigerian capital Abuja, prompting an angry response from the Ivorian leader's emissary, hardline parliamentary speaker Mamadou Koulibaly, who then quit the summit before it ended.
Presidents of Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Gabon, Burkina Faso and Senegal made clear that the airstrikes against the north were a breach of the ceasefire and issued their strong support for a proposed arms embargo and other targeted sanctions to be imposed against Ivory Coast.
The 15-member Security Council was expected Monday to vote on the French-sponsored resolution giving both sides in the crisis 30 days to implement a January 2003 peace pact or face sanctions, which would also included targeted travel bans and the gelling of assets.
A two-week march from the rebel stronghold Bouake to Abidjan that had been planned to begin Monday was postponed by at least one day, organizers said.
The rebel north, where power, water and telephone were cut for nine days in the wake of the strikes, was plunged back into darkness Sunday, provoking concerns among humanitarian workers of an outbreak of disease.
11/15/2004 - 11:37 GMT - AFP