Ivory Coast's government is trying to rebuild its air force after it was largely destroyed a year ago by French forces in retaliation for an air raid which killed nine French soldiers, a United Nations report says. The United Nations imposed a 13-month arms embargo on the war-divided West African state in November last year which forbade other countries from supplying military equipment, advice or training. "Since November 2004, the government of (Ivory Coast) has sought to repair, maintain and rebuild (its air force)," the U.N. report, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, said. In the study, a group of U.N. experts tasked with assessing the embargo said it was unsure whether the Ivorian government's actions had breached the ban and they asked the Security Council to look into the matter. An aide to Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo dismissed the report and denied the government was violating the embargo. "It's false. We are respecting the embargo. We are not repairing any planes," Bertin Kadet, special defense adviser to Gbagbo, told Reuters. The U.N. arms embargo applies to both the government holding the south, and rebels occupying the north of the world's top cocoa grower, which has been split since a 2002 civil war.
