UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The UN Security Council will vote to impose an immediate arms embargo on strife-torn Ivory Coast later, diplomats said.
The council last week put off voting on a resolution that would have given both the government and rebels in the former French colony 30 days to implement a stalled peace deal or face an arms embargo.
But the 15-nation council agreed Monday to heed a weekend call by African leaders to put the embargo in place without delay in a bid to try to defuse the tension in the divided west African nation, the diplomats said.
The arms embargo would be in effect for 13 months, while targeted travel bans and an asset freeze on selected individuals would come into force on December 15. The vote was set for around 2300 GMT.
An emergency African Union summit at the weekend recommended putting the embargo in place without delay in a tough message for Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo.
"We were very close to having a vote last week and now the African Union is wholly in support of what we`re doing," said US ambassador John Danforth.
Ivory Coast, the world`s top cocoa producer, has been divided since a September 2002 coup attempt against Gbagbo that plunged the nation into civil war. Little progess has been made on a subsequent peace deal.
New unrest was sparked earlier this month when French forces wiped out almost all of Ivory Coast`s tiny air force in retaliation for the death of nine French soldiers in air raids that the government said were aimed at rebel positions in the north.
That set off anti-French and anti-foreign unrest that reportedly left dozens of people killed. Abidjan, the country`s main city and once one of the most modern and sophisticated on the continent, was badly damaged.
Although the figures could not be independently confirmed, dozens of people have been reported killed in the violence that erupted in a week of vandalism and chaos that led thousands of foreigners to flee the country.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier has called the raid that killed the French troops deliberate.
Skeptical of claims that there were any French casualties, Gbagbo has been making the rounds of international media to defuse some of the criticism that he was responsible for the unrest that claimed between 22 and 64 lives.
He blasted French President Jacques Chirac, in comments to the Parisian daily Liberation, for the "insult" to say that France will remain in Ivory Coast and respond to prevent a decline into anarchy or fascism.
11/15/2004 - 19:44 GMT - AFP