Kufuor's Last-Minute Bid Fails....Ivory Coast shuts down

Abidjan, Ivory Coast - Ghana's President John Kufuor's last-minute bid to resolve rising tensions ahead of the opposition demonstration seems to have failed.

Kufuor flew to the Ivory Coast on Wednesday, as head of the 15-country Economic Community of West African States, met Gbagbo and held talks with rebels and opposition leaders, in a bid to defuse a looming crisis as opposition parties prepared to defy a ban on demonstrations by President Laurent Gbagbo.

"The entire world is watching the situation in Ivory Coast at this moment. We must make every effort to bring peace and to avoid any violence," Kufuor told journalists in the commercial capital Abidjan, before a meeting with political parties.

On Thursday morning, the Ivorian government deployed tanks and armoured cars around key sites and closed all schools as opposition political leaders vowed to hold a major protest march that many fear could turn violent.

The demonstration - calling for speedier implementation of a 2003 peace deal - would be the first large-scale protest against President Laurent Gbagbo's government since the end of a nine-month civil war last year

The ruling Ivorian Popular Front has accused opposition parties of plotting a coup d'etat and Gbagbo's presidential guards have said the city centre would be declared a "red zone" on Thursday that would be defended at all costs.

Opposition parties say the protest will go ahead despite an official ban on demonstrations.

Those taking part in the march include youth militants loyal to former President Henri Konan Bedie's Democratic Party of Ivory Coast and Alassane Dramane Ouattara's Rally of the Republicans party.

In a speech broadcast on state television on Wednesday, Gbagbo said the opposition parties had "a manifest wish to defy the state's authority" and that they should "renounce actions which could seriously compromise the progress of the peace process."

'Will not be peaceful'

"The march will not be peaceful," said ruling party official Laurent Akoun. He added that unspecified actions against the protesters would constitute "legitimate defence".

Security forces carried out house-to-house searches and arrests in Abidjan's poor neighbourhoods on Wednesday, shooting in the air and beating several people, residents said.

"They rounded up people and they even hit some of them," said Kone Alioune, who lives in the poor area of Boribana. "They were shooting in the air."

About 30 people, mainly foreigners, were stripped to the waist and forced into the back of police trucks, he said.

For decades, Ivory Coast was regarded as a haven of stability and prosperity in a region wracked by coup d'etats and civil wars.

That reputation was shattered with a 1999 coup, which saw Bedie overthrown and ushered in a series of revolts and uprisings.

The United Nations is to deploy 6,240 U.N. peacekeepers to Ivory Coast in early April to bolster a fragile peace deal already monitored by around 4,000 French and 1,400 West African troops.