Ivory Coast's ruling party said on Tuesday it was abandoning a faltering U.N. peace process and hundreds of pro-government protesters called for the expulsion of U.N. troops and mediators they accused of meddling, Reuters reported. The anti-U.N. protests in the commercial capital Abidjan and other cities threw into confusion international efforts to reunite the country, which has been split since a 2002 civil war between a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south. Protesting against a call by foreign mediators to dissolve the national parliament, young supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo besieged the U.N. mission headquarters in Abidjan, stoned U.N. vehicles and set up barricades in the streets. At the Abidjan HQ, U.N. troops fired warning shots and tear gas to stop protesters from breaking through the perimeter wall. The peacekeepers flew in reinforcements by helicopter. At Guiglo in the west of Ivory Coast, hundreds of pro-Gbagbo demonstrators entered a U.N. military base. Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front party (FPI) called for the withdrawal of more than 7,000 U.N. troops and police and 4,000 French soldiers who have together been maintaining a shaky peace in the world's top cocoa grower. "The FPI declares it is pulling out of the peace process and declares its refusal to continue for much longer in a recolonisation process overseen by the U.N.," FPI party president Pascal Affi N'Guessan told reporters. Gbagbo himself did not immediately comment but met with U.N. mission chief Pierre Schori to discuss the situation.
