UN guards Ivory Coast presumptive leader

United Nations peacekeepers laid sandbags and rolled out miles of razor wire Monday to protect the aging hotel that has become the political base for the man who most of the world says won Ivory Coast's presidential election.

A UN tank also took position on one side of the lagoon-facing hotel and armoured personnel carriers were strategically guarding the parking lot as Alassane Ouattara held his first cabinet meeting inside a hotel room. Across town in the real presidential palace, incumbent Laurent Gbagbo continued to defy calls from the United States, France and the European Union to step down.

Last week, the UN certified the election results confirming that Ouattara won, and his victory has been recognized by numerous world powers including the United States and France. But that didn't stop Gbagbo from going ahead with a shotgun inauguration over the weekend, where he warned foreign powers not to interfere.

Ouattara's advisers gathered by the hotel's pool and in the lobby Monday, sitting in lounge chairs between potted palm trees. Joel N'Guessan, his spokesman, said they are asking for the UN to use force and physically remove Gbagbo if he continues to cling tooffice.

"President Barack Obama called to congratulate Ouattara. [French] President[Nicolas] Sarkozy congratulated Ouattara. Germany sent it by fax. So did England," N'Guessan said. "These are countries that are on the Security Council. If they cannot make this man respect the results of an election certified by the UN, then we might as well stop talking about democracy in Africa."

In New York, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is "deeply concerned" about the situation in the Ivory Coast,spokesman Martin Nesirky said Monday. Ban has been in contact with many world leaders about the situation, and is consulting with former South African president Thabo Mbeki, who is serving as an international mediator in Ivory Coast, Nesirkysaid.

On Monday, the UN also weighed removing its nonessential personnel as many feared the country might return to civil war.

Gbagbo's term expired in 2005

Gbagbo, who came to power a decade ago and has stayed on as president five years after his legal term expired, has clamped down on TV and radio, yanking foreign channels off the air. State television is broadcasting continuous loops showing his inauguration ceremony, and many people in the capital are not even aware that most of the world as well as the country's electoral commission believes Ouattara to be the race's legal winner.

Even as calls poured in from foreign leaders urging him to step down, Gbagbo defiantly returned to work Monday as if attempting to will a return to normalcy. Schools reopened and children in uniforms and pigtails could be seen heading to class whilecolumns of black smoke rose from neighbourhoods where young men burned tires and demanded Gbagbo step down. The country's air and land borders reopened, too.

At the Golf Hotel, Ouattara received Mbeki, who has spent the past two days shuttling between the two sides.

In the lobby under a ceiling carved with geometric African designs, several chairs were occupied by men in grey camouflage, the uniform of the New Forces rebels. The rebels took over the north of the country during the civil war that broke out in 2002 and destroyed the economy of a nation once so prosperous in a region of abject poverty that it was dubbed the "Ivorian miracle."

The men say all they need is the word from Ouattara to go back to war.

World powers do not want to see that happen. On Monday, the president of former colonizer France said he had called Gbagbo and tried to persuade him to hand over power to Ouattara.

"I said the following: It's up to him to choose the role that he wants to play in history,"Sarkozy said in India's capital, New Delhi. "He must now leave power to the president who was elected."