The European Union is set to impose a travel ban on Ivory Coast’s incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo over disputed elections, a diplomat has told the BBC Monday.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy had given Mr Gbagbo a deadline of Sunday to step down. Mr Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara both say they won last month’s election and have each named cabinet ministers amid a stand-off in the main city Abidjan.
The UN, the West and African leaders all say Mr Ouattara was the victor. There are fears that the dispute could reignite civil war in the world’s largest cocoa producer.
The diplomat told the BBC that an agreement had been taken in principle to ban Mr Gbagbo, and 18 of his allies, from the EU. The travel ban had to be officially adopted by EU leaders within the next 24-48 hours but said this was a formality as all member states backed it.
A separate decision may be taken to freeze any of Mr Gbagbo’s assets in the EU. A US official last week said he and his fa-mily had “multiple homes in multiple countries”.
Over the weekend, Mr Gbagbo demanded that the 10.000-strong UN peacekeeping mission be withdrawn from the country, accusing the UN of bias in favour of Mr Ouattara. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon immediately rejected the demand.
One of Mr Gbagbo’s closest allies, youth leader Charles Ble Goude, is on a UN sanctions list after his Young Patriots group were accused of killing, raping and assaulting opposition supporters. He has now been named Mr Gbagbo’s youth minister.
UN troops are protecting the luxury Abidjan hotel where Mr Ouattara has been based since the disputed election.
Mr Ouattara, a former IMF economist and a muslim from the north of the country, was initially declared the winner by the electoral commission. But the Constitutional Council then annulled the vote in many rebel-held areas of the north, after Mr Gbagbo’s allies complained of fraud.
The first election in ten years was intended to reunify Ivory Coast, which has been split into two parts since a 2002 civil war.
