An African crisis summit to discuss unrest in Ivory Coast on Sunday called for an immediate UN arms embargo on both sides in the conflict, as the Ivorian government moved to rebuild its air force.

The United Nations had been expected to impose a ban on weapons purchases from Dec. 10 at a Security Council meeting yesterday, but the six African leaders meeting in Nigeria called for the sanctions to take immediate effect. “The summit expressed its support for the proposed resolution of the UN Security Council, which inter alia will impose an arms embargo on all parties in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), with immediate effect,” said a communique read by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who chairs the African Union.

The summit also instructed the African Union Peace and Security Council to hold a summit on the Ivory Coast within three weeks. Regional leaders fear full-scale war in Ivory Coast would destabilise West Africa, a neighbourhood which includes fragile post-conflict states such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo has begun buying fighter jets and attack helicopters to replace the ones destroyed by peacekeepers of former colonial power France, an Ivorian military source told Reuters.

French peacekeepers destroyed almost all the country’s air force earlier this month in response to their bombing of a French base during an assault on the rebel-held north, which killed nine French peacekeepers and shattered an 18-month ceasefire. “Do you think I am going to leave my country with no air defence?” Gbagbo said in an interview on French radio broadcast on Sunday. The government has ordered three Sukhoi fighter jets and three Mi-24 helicopter gunships, and two of each have arrived in nearby states, the military source said.

Rebels have controlled the mostly Muslim north of the country since a failed coup against Gbagbo in September 2002. The two sides signed deals on political reforms and rebel disarmament in January 2003 and July 2004, which the Abuja summit said still provided the only credible route to peace.

<B>French Exodus </B>

The French attack touched off a wave of violence against French and other foreigners, prompting thousands to flee the world’s top cocoa grower, once regarded as a model of stability. France airlifted more than a thousand expatriates in a fifth day of evacuations on Sunday, but the French army said the exodus was almost over.

Three planes carrying 1,050 people left the commercial capital Abidjan on Sunday, bringing the total number of foreigners airlifted by France to 4,248 in five days. On Saturday, Gbagbo sacked his army chief of staff General Matthias Doue, widely regarded as a moderate, and replaced him with Colonel Philippe Mangou, the former chief of operations who oversaw the assault on the north just over a week ago.

Ivorians were braced for further tension between the poorer north, also home to many immigrant workers from neighbouring countries, and the richer mainly Christian south. Northerners plan to march from the rebel stronghold of Bouake to the main city Abidjan – some 350 km (220 miles) away – to demand Gbagbo’s resignation.

“We don’t want to wait until Gbagbo exterminates us here in the north like dogs,” said Abel Dgohore Gbakayoro, one of the march organisers. The march was postponed from Monday to Wednesday to allow for better security preparation, he added;

<B>Felix Onuah</B>