Ivory Coast peace deal crumbles

Ivory Coast's peace accord neared collapse as several political parties joined the army to oppose giving key ministries to rebels under a deal that has ignited ethnic clashes and anti-French riots.

France, the former colonial power that brokered the agreement and has sent 2500 soldiers to the West African country, said on Wednesday it was ready to evacuate thousands of its citizens. Hundreds started to make their own way out on chartered aircraft.

"We are following the situation hour by hour and we will not hesitate," the Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, told French radio.

It was unclear whether President Laurent Gbagbo still felt his government bound by the peace agreement designed to end a four-month war in what was once the region's most stable and prosperous nation.

Opponents of the deal say Paris pushed Mr Gbagbo into agreeing to give too much to rebels - including the defence and interior ministries - as a price for ending the conflict in the world's biggest cocoa producer.

The army has rejected these key cabinet posts being given to rebels. It has also dismissed suggestions that it should demobilise its forces in the same way as the rebels.

Mr Gbagbo's ruling party and four other parties that signed the deal last weekend said in a statement from Paris that they opposed giving the security ministries to the rebels, adding that that aspect of the agreement was decided without their consent at a West African summit.

But they said they were still committed to the pact and called on France and the United Nations to find a negotiated solution.

The Interior Minister, Paul Yao N'dre, said dividing the ministries was "unacceptable".

Giving rebels control of the ministries "amounts to a constitutional coup d'etat", he said.

"The decision is an act of national humiliation for the President and the national armed forces of Ivory Coast, and we hereby declare that it is null and void," he said on national television in Togo on Wednesday.

The rebels, who were not at the news conference where the statement was read out, say they will not renegotiate a peace deal and a rebel leader said Mr Gbagbo had freely agreed to give his MPCI group the ministries.

But Mr Gbagbo's adviser said that was untrue. Mr Gbagbo had just taken note of what he was told by powerbrokers led by the French President, Jacques Chirac, and UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan.

Emphasising Ivory Coast's divide was the absence at the Paris news conference of representatives of the party of the former prime minister Alassane Ouattara. His power base in the Muslim north has been held by rebels since the war erupted with a failed coup in mid-September that has left hundreds dead, driven more than a million from their homes and raised fears of a spreading regional catastrophe.

Rebels accuse Mr Gbagbo of fanning ethnic hatred since he won disputed elections from which Mr Ouattara was excluded in 2000. Mr Gbagbo says the rebels are just out for power.

Agencies