Ivory Coast's neighbours threaten to force out leader

West African leaders are today due to give Mr Gbagbo a final chance to step aside, though he has shown no interest in doing so since the demand was made last week. While doubts exist about whether the region could carry out such a military operation, residents remain fearful of the violence it could unleash if attempted.

Dozens of people gathered outside the Nigerian embassy in Abidjan yesterday, holding signs that read: "We don't want a military intervention" and "Let Ivorians solve Ivorian problems."

Nigeria has the strongest army in the region and is expected to play a major role if an operation is launched to oust Mr Gbagbo.

The UN declared that Alassane Ouattara won the presidential runoff election held nearly a month ago, but Mr Gbagbo refuses to concede defeat and leave despite admonitions from the UN, the United States, EU and the African Union.

Mr Ouattara's supporters called for a general strike to begin yesterday to step up the pressure, but shops were open and it was business as usual in central Abidjan by midmorning.

Mr Gbagbo said he was not concerned about world opinion, insisting he had been duly elected. And he said of his detractors: "Maybe they do not want me, I admit it, but I am not looking to be loved by them. I respect and abide by the Ivorians' vote."

The UN has said at least 173 people have been killed in violence over the vote, heightening fears that the country once divided in two could return to civil war. The toll is believed to be much higher, though, as the UN mission has been blocked from investigating other reports, including an allegation of a mass grave.

Human rights groups have expressed alarm about hundreds of arrests, and dozens of cases of torture and disappearances since the vote that they blame on security forces associated with Mr Gbagbo. A Gbagbo adviser has said he does not believe their supporters could be behind the violence.

Gbagbo supporters say at least 36 of the victims were police or other security forces who were targeted by gunfire coming from protesters.

Mr Gbagbo has been in power since 2000 and had already overstayed his mandate by five years when the long-delayed presidential election was finally held in October. The vote was intended to help reunify the country, which was divided by the 2002-3 civil war into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south.

Instead, the election has renewed divisions that threaten to plunge the country back into civil war.While Ivory Coast was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal, Mr Ouattara still draws his support from the north of the country, where residents feel they are often treated as foreigners within their own country by southerners.

As part of a peace accord, the UN had been invited to certify the election results and declared Mr Ouattara as the winner of the 28 November runoff vote. But a Gbagbo ally overturned those results by throwing out half a million ballots from Ouattara strongholds in the north.

The west African regional bloc Ecowas is sending a high-level delegation of three leaders to Abidjan this week as "an ultimate gesture".

"In the event that Mr Gbagbo fails to heed this immutable demand of Ecowas, the community would be left with no alternative but to take other measures, including the use of legitimate force, to achieve the goals of the Ivorian people," the bloc said.

While the threat of force creates pressure on Mr Gbagbo, Africa security analyst Peter Pham said he doubted Ecowas was capable of such a move.

"None of the Ecowas countries has the type of special operations forces capable of a 'decapitation strike' to remove the regime leadership," said Mr Pham, senior vice-president of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy in New York. "That leaves the rather unpalatable option of mounting a full-scale invasion of the sort that would inevitably involve urban fighting and civilian casualties."