On air at 1700GMT: Is now the time for intervention in Ivory Coast?
| 10:03 UK time, Monday, 4 April 2011
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Was it a massacre? Some aid agencies put the number of dead in the town of Duekoue in Ivory Coast as high as 1,000. Last week, the ICRC said 800 were killed. But the UN has quietly disputed it and scaled down the number. Whatever the figure, the number of body bags rounded up by Red Cross workers is into the hundreds.
Militias supporting the UN recognised President of Ivory Coast Alassane Ouattara, swept through the region last week seizing territory from troops loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to give up power. The finger of blame is being pointed at Ouattara supporters, although they deny this. Whoever is to blame is irrelevant for the hundreds of people who have lost their lives.
And still the fighting goes on. The Ouattara government's Prime Minister says the time is right for a "rapid offensive" against the country's main city, Abidjan.It's thought Laurent Gbagbo is still inside the Presidential palace. Many residents are trapped indoors without food, water and electricity.
Is now the time for the international community to step in?
who is chief foreign affairs commentator at the FT blogs,
"The situation in Ivory Coast now threatens to rival Libya for bloodshed, mayhem and human-rights abuses."
Here is the
And for,
"an intervention in Ivory Coast to back up the winner of the elections Ouattara would probably upset those civilians (which are not a small minority) which see in Gbagbo their legitimate leader. And I am not sure that their rights would be safeguarded by the pro-Ouattara militias. My point here is that the identification of those civilians, which we are trying to defend, is too often arbitrarily chosen by external actors."
Is the situation complicated by claims that massacres have been carried out by supporters of the man the UN says is the rightful President?
Is there just a reality check needed? The traditional world policeman, in the form of the US, is stretched to the limit with troops in Afghanistan and Haiti and with operations in Libya, do they simply not have the manpower to get involved in another conflict?
Or as citics claim is it the case that Ivory Coast doesn't offer the west the same kind of benefits as Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan?
