Johannesburg — As West African leaders prepare to meet in Ghana on Sunday to discuss the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, the former colonial power, France offered logistical help to the embattled government of President Laurent Gbagbo.
Meanwhile, reports said rebel soldiers made fresh military gains on Saturday, advancing south towards the administrative capital, Yamoussoukro. They already control the second largest city, Bouake, in the centre of the country, as well as a string of towns in the predominantly Muslim north.
The fighting has now moved further south, near the town of Tiebissou only 26 miles (42km) north of Yamoussoukro, with reports of skirmishes between loyalist troops and the mutineers on Friday. They claimed to have repelled an army attack overnight Friday.
Early Sunday, French forces and helicopters backed by U.S. transport planes evacuated church and aid workers and other, mostly Western, foreigners from Korhogo, a major city in the north that has been under rebel control.
With rebels steadily advancing southwards, there are growing fears that they intend to achieve their stated aim of capturing Yamoussoukro, before heading down to Cote d'Ivoire's coastal metropolis, Abidjan - the seat of government, the country's commercial hub and home to millions.
The government has accused the dissidents of trying to seize power in a coup on 19 September, which it said was planned by the former military leader Robert Guei, who was shot dead on the first day of fighting. Hundreds of people have been killed and hundreds more injured as thousands fled their homes.
Key west African leaders have rallied to Gbagbo's support, warning that they would not tolerate an unconstitutional military takeover in the region. They meet Sunday in Accra, capital of neighbouring Ghana, to offer their support to what they have called the 'legitimate' government in Cote d'Ivoire, and to seek solutions to the bloody uprising.
All are aware of the danger facing their own countries, should the explosion of violence in the region's second strongest economy -- and the world's top cocoa producer -- spread across Cote d'Ivoire's borders.
The current chairman of the African Union (AU), South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, is also expected to attend the Accra heads of state summit. "The main aim will be to see how we can break the deadlock," in Cote d'Ivoire, the executive secretary of the Economic Commission of West African States (Ecowas), Mohamed Ibn Chambas, said Saturday.
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Chambas confirmed that President Gbagbo and the leader of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaore, who Ivorian newspapers have accused of backing the rebellion, are both scheduled at the Ghana meeting. Gbagbo's government has also fingered its northern neighbour, Burkina, of involvement in the coup, without specifically naming names. Relations between the two countries are tense.
There were reports Ecowas might choose to send a regional intervention force into Cote d'Ivoire, after Nigeria dispatched three fighter jets on Wednesday. In recent years, Ecowas has sent its armed wing, Ecomog, to try to end brutal civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone, as well as briefly to quell a rebellion in Guinea Bissau.
But analysts said although Gbagbo wanted the region's help to fight the 11-day rebellion, he would not request troops and would resist outright military intervention, because he felt his own Ivorian army could do the fighting.
"We believe that our own soldiers can liberate our territory from this aggression," Cote d'Ivoire's Defence Minister, Moise Lida Kouassi, told Reuters News Agency on Saturday. He said his country was not seeking troop reinforcements from either the region or France.
Paris, which has had an army base in Abidjan since independence in 1960, has offered logistical help to its former colony, but stopped short of offering military assistance. France and Cote d'Ivoire have a joint defence agreement. Lida Kouassi said they were calling on Paris and "African friends" for transport, field communications, munitions and other supplies.
