Ivory Coast Army Foils Coup Plot

UN troops drive an armored vehicle past a sign reading "Let's advance on the road to peace," in Abidjan, Ivory Coast in this Saturday, Oct. 14, 2006 file photo. The army of war-divided Ivory Coast said Tuesday Dec. 12, 2006 it had foiled an "imminent" coup plot against President Laurent Gbagbo. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, File) (Schalk Van Zuydam - AP)

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast -- The army of war-divided Ivory Coast said Tuesday it had foiled an "imminent" coup plot against President Laurent Gbagbo.

"For several weeks, army officers, noncommissioned officers and military within the security forces have been approached by civilians and military to carry out a coup d'etat ... with the support of a military force in Ivory Coast," army spokesman Col. Babri Gohourou said in a statement read on state television.

The alleged coup was planned this week and aimed at assassinating "political authorities and military leaders, notably the president of the republic and the army chief of staff," the statement said.

Gohourou declined to say whether there had been any arrests or what the army had done to derail the plot.

Ivory Coast has been split into a government-run south and a rebel-held north since insurgents failed to topple Gbagbo in a 2002 attempted coup. The United Nations is overseeing a transition government and some 10,000 U.N. and French troops are deployed in the worlds top cocoa grower, many of them in a buffer zone separating both sides.

Political tensions have been high in recent weeks after the United Nations awarded more powers to Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny _ a move that followed Gbagbo's rejection of U.N. intervention. Banny later publicly criticized Gbagbo in a TV broadcast, after which Gbagbo fired the head of Ivorian television.

It has been unclear to whom the army answers _ with the U.N. mandating that Banny is in charge, but the head of forces claiming allegiance to Gbagbo.

Banny supporters have been holding intermittent, low-level protests across the country since the power shift _ some which police have broken up. Last week, witnesses at an anti-government protest said police fired into the crowd, killing one person.

Presidential and legislative elections had to be postponed twice due to the failure of both sides to implement peace agreements. The U.N.-backed peace plan is to steer the divided country to elections before a November 2007 deadline.