African leaders are heading to Ivory Coast on Monday, their second visit in a week to persuade the country's renegade president to cede power more than a month after the disputed election or face a military ouster. Laurent Gbagbo has defied the calls to step down, even though results tallied by the country's electoral commission and certified by the United Nations showed he lost by a nearly 9-point margin to longtime opposition leader Alassane Ouattara.
Gbagbo has clung to power with the backing of the army, and human rights groups accuse his security forces of abducting and killing political opponents. The U.N. also says it is being blocked from investigating two suspected mass graves, allegations Gbagbo denies. The violence over the vote has left at least 173 people dead, heightening fears that the country once divided in two by a 2002-2003 civil war could return to open conflict.
For several days after the vote, Gbagbo loyalists tried to prevent the election commission from releasing the outcome, and once the results were out, the constitutional council led by a Gbagbo adviser immediately overturned them by canceling half a million ballots from opposition strongholds. Gbagbo's government then imposed a media blackout, yanking foreign channels off the air. He called on the United Nations peacekeeping mission to leave the country, accusing them of backing his opponent, who is holed up in a luxury hotel in the commercial capital of Abidjan.
The election was intended to help reunify the country, which was divided by the war into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south. Instead, the election has renewed divisions that threaten to plunge the country back into civil war. While Ivory Coast was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal, Ouattara still draws his support from the northern half of the country, where residents feel they are often treated as foreigners within their own country by southerners.
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