Gaddafi rebels look to Tripoli, peace plan mooted (Reuters)

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Ivorian rebels seize town (Reuters)

By Loucoumane Coulibaly and Charles Bamba Loucoumane Coulibaly And Charles Bamba – Fri Feb 25, 12:49 pm ET

ABIDJAN/BOUAKE, Ivory Coast (Reuters) – Rebels controlling northern Ivory Coast have seized a town in government territory and said on Friday they were still advancing, raising the prospects of a return to open war.

Loyalists of Laurent Gbagbo, clinging to power after an election most of the world says he lost, confirmed the fall of Zouan-Hounien in an overnight attack and said they would fight to take it back.

"We're in the process of re-organizing ourselves," Yao Yao, head of operations of the pro-Gbagbo Front for the Liberation of the Greater West militia told Reuters by phone from the region.

The small, remote town lies in western Ivory Coast near the forested border with Liberia and is not on a key axis, but the fighting there marks a major escalation.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that clashes this week in the main city, Abidjan, and in the west have taken the world's top cocoa grower closer to the brink of a new civil war.

Rebel spokesman Ouattara Seydou said the New Forces had been attacked from Zouan-Hounien and were moving south to another town held by Gbagbo loyalists.

Ivory Coast's spiral back toward a war fueled by ethnic animosities follows an election last November which Gbagbo's rival Alassane Ouattara is almost universally recognized to have won.

Gbagbo, in power for more than a decade, has refused to leave the presidency of once prosperous Ivory Coast, which has been split between north and south since a 2002-03 war.

He has so far retained the support of most of the armed forces and, in Abidjan, can also rely on the "Young Patriots," often violent youth supporters who erected roadblocks and set fire to buses and taxis on Friday.

U.N. WARNING

Their leader Charles Ble Goude on Friday called on people to set up "self-defense" units to protect themselves from the rebels, and ordered them to block U.N. peacekeepers, who are protecting Ouattara in a lagoon-side hotel.

Any such move risks pitting U.N. peacekeepers against unarmed but hostile civilians. In a statement issued by his spokesperson, Ban Ki-moon called for restraint on both sides while African Union mediators try to resolve the crisis.

Diplomacy has made no headway so far.

The spreading violence has killed more than 300 people according to the United Nations, but diplomats think that figure hugely understated because the military rarely discloses its casualties or civilians killed by soldiers.

The threat to supplies has pushed cocoa futures to their highest in more than 30 years.

Gun battles raged overnight in the Abobo neighborhood of the main city of Abidjan where insurgents, dubbed by local media the "invisible commandos," have risen up against Gbagbo.

"Gun shots were echoing everywhere throughout the night and there was heavy arms fire," said resident Souala Tiemoko as hundreds of people marched along the road out of the district of quarter of a million, salvaging whatever belongings they could.

Gbagbo's spokesman Ahoua Don Mello says the gunmen in Abobo are rebels who have come down from the north. Ouattara's parallel government says they are civilians and army defectors.

Fleeing businesses, and economic sanctions by the European Union and United States aiming to squeeze Gbagbo are fast wrecking the economy of this once prosperous nation.

Ivory Coast's 80,000 barrel per day SIR refinery, a target of Western sanctions, said on Friday it was operating "at a minimum" and is struggling to secure crude oil.

The U.N. refugee agency said it had reports that the number of people crossing into neighboring Liberia had jumped from around 100 per day to 5,000 after the latest clashes in western Ivory Coast.

(Additional reporting by Ange Aboa, Luc Gnago and Tim Cocks; writing by David Lewis and Tim Cocks; Editing by Matthew Tostevin)

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Gov't: Philippine rebels stronger ahead of talks (AP)

MANILA, Philippines – Communist guerrillas grew stronger last year after a long period of battle losses, acquiring more fighters and guns and killing more government forces in a spike of attacks, a Philippine government report says ahead of renewed peace talks.

Government and rebel negotiators are to resume talks stalled for more than six years, on Tuesday in Norway. Both sides have declared a weeklong cease-fire to bolster the negotiations aimed at ending one of Asia's longest-running Marxist insurgencies.

Government negotiators have expressed hope that last year's election of reformist President Benigno Aquino III on the promise he would reduce poverty and improve governance would soften the rural-based insurgency, which has survived decades of military crackdown.

A confidential government threat assessment report, however, said the guerrillas managed to recover last year from a decline dealt by battle losses since 2002 with its fighters increasing by 30 to 4,398 and firearms rising by more than 130 in just a year to 4,871.

The rebels managed to re-establish six rural strongholds that had been overrun by the military and staged 413 attacks — 11 percent more than in 2009. Security personnel killed by the rebels rose by nearly 9 percent to 172, including 102 soldiers, due to improved guerrilla capability to make bombs used in ambushes, according to the report. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press.

"Despite what many consider its anachronistic ideology, the insurgency has endured," the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said. "Many of its criticisms of income inequality, human rights abuses and broader social injustice still resonate with some Filipinos."

The report said government forces killed 35 rebels last year and captured 131 others while more than 150 surrendered.

Military chief of staff Gen. Ricardo David Jr. said army troops and police captured Allan Jazmines, a member of the policy-making central committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, at a rebel safehouse in Baliuag town in Bulacan province before nightfall Monday.

The rebels protested the arrest and demanded his immediate and unconditional release "so that there will be no disruption of the formal peace talks."

Chief rebel negotiator Luis Jalandoni said in a statement that Jazmines is among guerrilla consultants to the talks covered by a government immunity from arrests and prosecution amid the negotiations.

The military has said that it was willing to release Jazmines if he was covered by the government immunity.

David said without elaborating that the arrest of Jazmines, shortly before a cease-fire came into force, was a setback to the Maoist rebels' "organizing, deception and propaganda efforts, adding "arrests of this kind will continue."

Jazmines was captured twice during the reign of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and was among communist leaders who were freed when President Corazon Aquino took power following a 1986 "people power" revolt that toppled the strongman, said Satur Ocampo, a former rebel spokesman and negotiator.

Both sides imposed a weeklong cease-fire that began Tuesday to foster the negotiations, which stalled in 2004 after the Maoist rebels accused then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's government of instigating the inclusion of the communist party and its armed wing, the New People's Army, in U.S. and European terrorist blacklists.

It was the first time since on-and-off talks started 25 years ago that the rebels have agreed to a cease-fire while negotiations are being held.

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Associated Press reporter Oliver Teves contributed to this report.

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