Thousands of hardline supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo crowded into an Abidjan stadium demanding newly-arrived UN peacekeepers ?liberate? Ivory Coast from rebels who still hold the north and west 19 months after an armed uprising.

Parc Champroux stadium was filled with as many as 20,000 people, witnesses said, and ringed by Ivory Coast security and defense officials as well as guards attached to the Young Patriots who organized the rally.

Firebrand Young Patriots leader, Charles Ble Goude, said the rally was a chance for his supporters ?to tell the peacekeepers what we expect of them?.

The rapid and efficient disarmament of the rebel forces whose failed coup bid in September 2002 plunged the country into war. If they refuse, he warned, ?we will send them back where they came from.?

Participants were frisked twice and their bags inspected as they entered the stadium for speeches which kicked after a long delay in mid-afternoon. Tempers ran high among the attendees, most of them young men who shouted their support for the president and their hatred of the rebels as they jostled to join the boisterous crowd.

Authorities refused access to the stadium to journalists, saying they were not able to guarantee her security inside the stadium, as dozens of youths hurled epithets against foreign journalists, whites and former colonial power France, which they called a ?foul and cowardly? country.

<B>A sell-out to terrorism</B>

Similar rhetoric was flying inside the grounds, where Sansan Kouao, a longtime reactionary with Gbagbo?s ruling Ivorian Popular Front, gave France and the United Nations a month to disarm the rebels.

Any failure, he warned, would result in the systematic abduction of white expatriates to force the international community to react.

The Young Patriots have been at the forefront of much of violence to hit Abidjan since January 2003, when a French-brokered peace pact was signed to end the civil war and return stability to the one-time West African powerhouse, whose cocoa-based economy has plummeted since the crisis began.

The peace pact, which mandated the creation of a transition unity government before elections in a year and a half, is seen by the hardliners as a sell-out to terrorism and a humiliation to Ivory Coast for bringing rebels into the very government they tried to overthrow.

The rebels have refused to disarm until questions of national identity and land ownership that were catalysts for the rebellion are resolved. They have also demanded that pro-government militias be dissolved before they lay down their weapons.

Sunday?s demonstration had initially been set for Saturday to coincide with a prayer service by some 10,000 supporters of the opposition, including the political arm of the rebellion, to commemorate victims slain in days of clashes that followed an anti-government rally on March 25.

Heavy pressure from the UN mission and other international observers forced Ble Goude to reluctantly take to state television late Friday to announce a postponement of the rally to avoid any problems.

The opposition had made an incident-free rally on Saturday a pre-condition of resuming dialogue with Gbagbo, whom they blame for the violence they say killed as many as 500 people. The official death toll is set at 37.

The major foreign radio networks heard in Abidjan, French-language BBC Afrique, Radio France Internationale and Africa No 1, were off the air for eight hours on Sunday as the ?patriots? gathered for their rally.

No technical explanation was offered before programming resumed at around 1700 GMT. Similar silences have affected the Ivorian airwaves before, most recently on March 25 and the days that followed.