Ivory Coast fears a wider war .. Ghana could be sucked In.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - The four-week uprising by mutinous soldiers has been suspended, but a wave of xenophobia and ethnic hostility has been unleashed across this West African nation, and has raised fears of a bloodbath.

A truce signed Thursday between the government and the rebels raised hopes that both sides would silence their guns. But Ivorians questioned whether the peace would last.


The fighting was a volatile forum for deep-seated animosities. Diplomats and aid workers voiced fear that conditions might escalate into ethnic bloodletting reminiscent of Yugoslavia and Rwanda.


After a coup attempt Sept. 19, President Laurent Gbagbo accused militant groups among the West African immigrant population of fueling the rebellion. Government forces in Abidjan, the commercial center of this country of 16 million, burned and bulldozed shantytowns, displacing thousands of immigrants accused of harboring the rebels.


People from Mali, Ghana, Guinea, and Liberia were affected. But the main targets were those from neighboring Burkina Faso, who make up almost half of the country's 5 million immigrants.


While most immigrants work as laborers in the cocoa fields in the southern region of the Ivory Coast, which produces more than 40 percent of the world's cocoa, some have found work in Abidjan as office clerks, or as gardeners, cooks, and maids.

''They burned my home and they took all my money,'' said Kiema Tiendogo, 55, a gardener from Burkina Faso who had lived in a shantytown that was razed by government soldiers.


''I came home and I saw my bed, my chairs, and pictures of my three children, all on fire. They say that we did it, but how are we to blame? It's very difficult to understand what's happening.''


In some cases, paramilitary police demanded money from the immigrants and strip-searched the women, according to an embassy delegate from Burkina Faso who is investigating the treatment of those displaced by the shantytown burnings.


There also have been reports of paramilitary police abducting and beating immigrant men, and of some of the women being raped during searches, he said.


Clashes between the rebels and government forces killed at least 400 people, including Gbagbo's political rival, General Robert Guei, who is suspected of organizing the attempted coup. Tens of thousands fled towns in the northern and central areas of the country seized by rebels.

Once considered the cultural and financial star of West Africa, Ivory Coast is in the throes of its gravest crisis in 43 years of independence. The truce appeared to be holding yesterday, but if more fighting erupts and spreads, it could further destabilize a region plagued by war and hardship.


Bowing to pressure from leaders in the United States and France, Gbagbo softened his hard-line stance against immigrants and other foreigners, and in a nationally televised speech last week he urged Ivorians to be tolerant. He also expressed his willingness to negotiate with the rebels - once they disarmed.


But for several weeks in central Abidjan, thousands of flag-waving youths from Ivorian political parties have denounced the rebels as ''terrorists'' and ''assailants,'' and have voiced their support for Gbagbo. They have shouted slogans like ''Ivory Coast for Ivorians'' and ''Ivorite,'' a term that asserts a notion of Ivorian purity. The rallies have ratcheted up tension between native Ivorians and the immigrants.


''As soon as your name is Ouattara or Coulibaly,'' common surnames from Burkina Faso and Mali, ''you're automatically called a foreigner. You become subhuman,'' said Guillaume Soro Kigbafori, a leader of the rebel group, the Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast, which had demanded elections and a new president. ''We have the roots of genocide in Ivory Coast. Ivorians are discriminated against because of their blood.''


A US assistant secretary of state, Walter Kansteiner, who met with Gbagbo on Wednesday before the cease-fire, said: ''There are clearly worries of some xenophobia and antiforeign attitude, particularly in Abidjan.''

Less than a decade after his death of the country's first ruler, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, the Ivory Coast has spiraled into disarray as one leader after another has exploited ethnic and religious differences as a fast track to power. The tactic has worked in this country, where political parties generally are cut along ethnic lines.


Diplomatic officials and humanitarian observers said they were alarmed by reports that young men recruited and armed by the rebels in cities like Bouake and are using those weapons to settle long-smoldering feuds among ethnic groups. People fleeing Bouake have reported armed ethnic Diaola youths shooting people from other tribes, including the Gueres, the Baoules and Gbagbo's ethnic group, the Bete.


If the reports are true, analysts say, the crisis could widen, transforming a war between mostly Christian Ivorians from the south and mostly Muslim immigrants from the north to a genocide among the country's more than 60 ethnic groups.


Cherif Ousmane, a top rebel commander in Bouake, denied that was happening. ''We invite any ethnic group who believes in the cause of freedom to join us,'' he said. ''Our purpose is to unite all the ethnic groups. We are all Ivorian.''


But even as the cease-fire enters its third day, people here remain wary, fearing that the crisis in Ivory Coast cuts too deep for the negotiating table.

''The Ivory Coast was where you made your dreams come true. Immigrants came here to do the jobs that Ivorian nationals didn't want to do, but now the sentiment is that non-Ivorians should be chased out of the country,'' said Rosa Malango, a UN humanitarian aid coordinator in Abidjan.


''It's like it was in Rwanda. You have hate media and mobilization of youth, extreme definitions of nationalism and patriotism. The people here are so close to a civil war, and they don't even see it.''


This story ran on page A9 of the Boston Globe on 10/20/2002.