ABIDJAN (AFP) - Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo called a cabinet meeting after vowing to rebuild his military and attempting to woo back the thousands of foreign nationals who fled a new wave of violence in the divided west African state.
"The embargo is convenient for us," Gbagbo told French Info radio, referring to sanctions imposed unanimously on Monday by the UN Security Council against the world's top cocoa producer.
"If it means that our adversaries no longer have any weapons, we will no longer need weapons either."
"But in the long term, after all this, Ivory Coast will need to rebuild its forces and it will need a true army and to rebuild its air fleet," the Ivorian leader added Thursday.
Prime Minister Seydou Diarra was to attend the cabinet session, the first since a series of air raids on the rebel-held north of the country began November 4 in violation of an 18-month-old ceasefire.
Ministers representing the rebel New Forces have ruled out participating in any cabinet meetings until their security was guaranteed, while there was no confirmation from the political opposition of their attendance.
Ivory Coast's air force was virtually wiped out November 6 by a French riposte for an air strike on its barracks in the central rebel stronghold of Bouake that killed nine French troops and a US aid worker and injured more than 30 people.
The raids ruptured an 18-month-old ceasefire aimed to reconcile the country divided since September 2002 after a failed coup sparked a civil war.
The aggressive retaliation by Ivory Coast's former colonial power unleashed a fury of anti-French violence that seeped from the main city Abidjan to the western port town of San Pedro, also host to a large expatriate community, that left hundreds of injured and dozens of homes and businesses destroyed.
Competing Ivorian government tolls suggest between 22 and 64 people were killed in clashes with the French military, though no expatriates have been confirmed dead.
At least 75 complaints have been filed with the French courts -- three of them for rape, court sources have said.
The prominent Dakar-based rights organisation RADDHO described the UN embargo as a "late but salutary decision (which constitutes) the first step in the eradication of the logic of war".
In a statement released late Tuesday, RADDHO (the African Meeting for the Defense of Human Rights) considered that the embargo created a favourable climate for promoting peace, calling for "political, realistic and pragmatic solutions."
More than 8,000 French and foreign nationals have since fled the country of 17 million, once a beacon of prosperity for west African but now mired in turmoil that threatens to bleed over its borders and destabilize the hard-won peace in its volatile neighbors.
"French schools were burned in Abidjan, so I understand completely that parents are leaving, concerned that their children can carry on their schooling as normal," Gbagbo said.
"But as for the others, the businessmen, not only do I ask them to return, but I say it is in our mutual interest ... that they return.
"What are they supposed to do today in France after having invested their whole lives in the Ivory Coast?" he added.
Another 13,000 Ivorian nationals have flooded into northeastern Liberia, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said, taxing the resources of the tiny country struggling to emerge from its own 14 years of conflict.
More than 1,000 people arrived in the town of Bimplay overnight Wednesday, reporting flashes of gunfire they feared could signal fresh fighting between rebel and government troops.
"They don't know who is doing the firing, but there is the concern that it is uncontrolled elements on either side," UN deputy special envoy to Liberia Abu Musa told AFP.
The UN's World Food Program has put in place contingency plans to feed some 10,000 Ivorian refugees, WFP Liberia director Justin Bagirishya told AFP from Monrovia.
"We hope to have the food on helicopters in a matter of days -- even today," he said, in a cooperative effort with the UN mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
"Time is running short for us."

11/18/2004 - 12:11 GMT - AFP