ABIDJAN (AFP) - When Ivory Coast held its first cabinet meeting since government planes attacked the rebel-held north, President Laurent Gbagbo vowed to rebuild his military and tried to woo back thousands of foreigners who fled a fury of violence in the west African state.
Boycotting the session for security reasons, rebel leader Guillaume Soro, who serves as communications minister in the unity cabinet, opened his own diplomatic drive with talks with UN special envoy Albert Tevoedjre before leaving for Togo.
Soro would spend Friday in Ghana and Saturday in talks with President Thabo Mbeki in South Africa, his spokesman Antoine Beugre told AFP.
The meeting chaired by Gbagbo opened at midday, attended by Prime Minister Seydou Diarra in his first public appearance since the November 4 start of three days of air strikes on rebel positions that Soro has said killed at least 85 civilians.
The ruling Ivorian Popular Front delegation arrived together, followed by the seven ministers representing the former single ruling Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), now in opposition.
Just two of the seven ministers from the main opposition Rally for Republicans (RDR) joined Thursday's session "for security reasons," an RDR spokesman told AFP.
None of the nine ministers from the rebel New Forces were present, having made clear they would not attend any cabinet sessions without security guarantees despite an offer of armed escorts from the UN operation in Ivory Coast.
A former beacon of stability and prosperity for troubled west Africa, Ivory Coast has been convulsed by conflict since a failed September 2002 coup sparked a civil war.
The latest unrest opened with the strikes that ruptured an 18-month-old ceasefire. A last raid cratered a French military barracks in the central town of Bouake, killing nine French troops and a US aid worker.
France responded by wiping out the modest Ivorian air force and seizing the airport in what senior government officials have called an attempted coup d'etat against France's former star colony, the world's top cocoa producer.
France also pushed an arms embargo through the UN Security Council, which could be followed December 15 by targeted travel bans and the freezing of assets should there be no progress made in implementing a January 2003 peace pact.
Adding to the chorus of support for the embargo voiced around Africa, the prominent Dakar-based rights advocates RADDHO said it was a "late but salutary decision (marking) the first step in the eradication of the logic of war".
Though his partisans have cried foul, Gbagbo told French Info radio on Thursday that the embargo was "convenient" for his government.
"If it means that our adversaries no longer have any weapons, we will no longer need weapons either," he said.
"But after all this, Ivory Coast will need to rebuild its forces and it will need a true army and to rebuild its air fleet."
France's retaliation sent tens of thousands into a frenzy of anti-French vandalism and violence, sparking clashes between Gbagbo partisans and French troops that left some 60 dead according to the government.
More than 8,000 French and foreign nationals have since fled the country of 17 million now mired in turmoil that threatens to bleed over its borders.
Returned French nationals have filed 77 complaints with the French courts -- three of them for rape, court sources at Paris' Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport said on hursday.
"French schools were burned in Abidjan, so I understand completely that parents are leaving," 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.

11/18/2004 - 17:45 GMT - AFP