ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast: Five generals pledged their loyalty to President Alassane Ouattara Tuesday following the capture of the country's strongman leader after a four-month standoff, as French and Ivorian forces worked to eliminate the last pockets of resistance. Ouattara's spokesman Patrick Achi confirmed that the generals who had been fighting on Laurent Gbagbo's side right up until his capture swore allegiance before Ouattara one by one at the Golf Hotel, where he set up his presidency after Gbagbo refused to acknowledge losing the November presidential election. Doh Ouattara, a member of the security team at the hotel, said Gbagbo, his wife and entourage were in a suite there. He said the lower-level officials traveling with Gbagbo had been sealed inside the bar of the luxury hotel. UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said that “contrary to earlier information, Laurent Gbagbo remains at the Golf Hotel in Abidjan.” He gave no further explanation. Earlier Tuesday, Haq had said that Gbagbo was not at the Golf Hotel anymore and was at an undisclosed location outside Abidjan. It was not clear what led to the confusion. More than one million civilians fled their homes and untold numbers were killed in the more than four-month power struggle between the two rivals. The standoff threatened to re-ignite a civil war in the world's largest cocoa producer, once divided in two by violence nearly a decade ago. — Associated Press Armed fighters still prowled the streets of Abidjan even after Gbagbo was arrested by forces backing Ouattara. ed north and a loyalist south by a 2002-2003 civil war and was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal. The long-delayed presidential election was intended to bring together the nation but instead unleashed months of violence. Gbagbo already had overstayed his mandate by five years when he called the fall election and won 46 percent of the runoff vote. When the country's election commission and international observers declared on Dec. 2 that he lost the balloting, he refused to step down. The former history professor defied near-universal international pressure to hand over power to Ouattara. The two set up parallel administrations that vied for control of the one-time West African economic powerhouse. Ouattara drew his support from the U.N. and world powers. Gbagbo maintained his hold over the country's military and security forces who carried out a campaign of terror, kidnapping, killing and raping opponents.
