Gbagbo said the next day that elements of the resolution deemed to be constitutional violations would not be applied.

At the ceremony, Gbagbo declared the war over and said that the country should move quickly to elections, which were then planned for early 2008.

Upon his return, he said that President Gbagbo should not remain in office after the end of his term in October 2005 and that a transitional government should be installed.

" When asked about his representation of Gbagbo, McEwen said: " I was a member of the intelligence committee.

He also indicates that the current leadership has spent decades betraying ivorians, and today ivorians have learnt how to betray them by simply buying membership cards and paty's gadgets for all 3 main parties. As an example he said when President Gbagbo go for a tour in a region, he would find 15, 000 people declaring allegiance to his party.

At the FPI's 3rd Ordinary Congress on 9 – 11 July 1999, Gbagbo was chosen as the FPI's candidate for the October 2000 presidential election.

Gbagbo visited the north for the first time since the outbreak of the war for a disarmament ceremony, the " peace flame ", on 30 July 2007.

Gbagbo was constitutionally barred from being party leader after he became President, and at the FPI's Third Extraordinary Congress, held from 20 to 22 July 2001, N ' Guessan was elected as President of the FPI, receiving 94. 55 % of the vote.

Wodié stepped down as head of the PIT in 2011, but Ouattara then appointed him as President of the Constitutional Council on 25 July 2011 ; Wodié was appointed to replace Paul Yao N ' Dre, a loyalist of Ouattara's ousted opponent Laurent Gbagbo.

On 30 August 2008, Gbagbo was designated the FPI's candidate for the November 2008 presidential election at a party congress ; he was the only candidate for the FPI nomination.

On March 10, 2008, a trial of Coulibaly, involving his alleged plot to seize power and kill Gbagbo with mercenaries in 2003, began in Paris.

He claimed that the legal proceedings against him were intended to keep him from returning to Côte d ' Ivoire to run against Gbagbo in the 2008 presidential election.

Gbagbo had ordered air strikes on Ivorian rebels.

However, the Constitutional Council, which according to Article 94 of the Ivorian Constitution both determines disputes in and proclaims the results of Presidential elections, declared that Gbagbo had won.

In 2010, Côte d ' Ivoire had a presidential election that saw Gbagbo face off with Alassane Ouattara.

Gbagbo, whose mandate had expired in 2005, had delayed the election several times.

According to Ouattara, his forces established a security perimeter at the residence, where Gbagbo had sought refuge in a subterranean level, and were waiting for him to run out of food and water.

Gbagbo was held in the Golf Hotel by Ouattara's forces, but the UN police had accepted his request for their protection.

Initial reports indicated that French special forces had made the arrest, based on declarations by a Gbagbo aide, but it was denied by the French ambassador in Côte d ' Ivoire.

Gbagbo had the tunnel blocked with concrete as soon as he came to power in 2000, marking his political independence to France, the former colonial master.

Gbagbo was arrested in Korhogo, where he had been placed under house arrest, and was placed on a flight to The Hague on 29 November 2011 without knowing where he was led to.

On June 23, 2001, Laurent Gbagbo, who had been elected President in the 2000 election, met with Bédié in Paris and urged him to return to Côte d ' Ivoire.

She claimed that only diplomacy, negotiation and consultation were able to settle the tangle of the 2010 – 2011 Ivorian crisis, which had begun in the aftermath of the run-off of the 2010 presidential election, when both Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara have claimed victory and taken the presidential oath of office.

Three days later, he stated that he had succeeded in liberating the hostages, thanks to his contacts all over the world ( mainly former baathists, and the Côte d ' Ivoire president Laurent Gbagbo, who provided support, including the Ivorian presidential plane ).

There Laurent Gbagbo had refused, in spite of international condemnation and local protests and resistance, to step aside and hand over power to Alassane Ouattara, the certified winner of the presidential election.

The international community, including the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States ( ECOWAS ), the European Union, the United States, and former colonial power France affirmed their support for Ouattara and called for Gbagbo to step down. However, negotiations to resolve the dispute failed to achieve any satisfactory outcome.

Upon her election to office, Sirleaf made her first foreign trip as President to neighboring Côte d ' Ivoire, meeting with Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo in an attempt to repair relations between the two countries following Côte d ' Ivoire's support of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia during the Second Liberian Civil War.

Laurent Gbagbo ( Gagnoa Bété: ; ; born 31 May 1945 ) is the former President of Côte d ' Ivoire from 2000 until his arrest in April 2011.

Gbagbo claimed victory after Robert Guéï, head of a military junta, barred other leading politicians from running against Gbagbo in the October 2000 presidential election.

In the November 1990 parliamentary election, Gbagbo won a seat in the National Assembly, along with eight other members of the FPI ; Gbagbo was elected to a seat from Ouragahio District in Gagnoa Department and was President of the FPI Parliamentary Group from 1990 to 1995.

In 1996 Gbagbo was re-elected to his seat in the National Assembly from Ouragahio, following a delay in the holding of the election there, and in the same year he was elected as President of the FPI.

Gbagbo ordered the army to close the borders and foreign news organizations were banned from broadcasting from within the country.

Leaders of the Forces Nouvelles ( former rebels ) asserted that Gbagbo was not the Head of State and could not make such a request and also asserted that the demand was a part of a plan to commit genocide on ethnicities from the north of the country, as stated by Gbagbo's Minister of Youth and Employment.

But there have been persistent reports from Alain Toussaint, Gbagbo's Special Advisor in France, that French forces did indeed make the arrest possible namely by blasting open the corridor that linked the presidential residence to the French embassy in Abidjan, enabling pro-Outtara forces to move in quickly to seize Gbagbo.

Later speaking from inside the Golf Hotel in Abidjan, Gbagbo told the regular armies to stop fighting.

", even in Côte d ' Ivoire where, beyond the provocations of Laurent Gbagbo, elected with less than 15 % of the polls, the vast majority of people feel no resentment towards the French, nor the huge number of Franco-Ivorian citizens, and few towards the former colonizing power, their main target being rather the rests of paternalism of the French political attitude in Black Africa, leading to political tensions from time to time.

Coulibaly was again implicated and fled to Burkina Faso, where he and other opponents of the Gbagbo government were sheltered by regional rival Blaise Compaore.

* The Young Patriots: nationalist groups aligned with President Laurent Gbagbo

* Mercenaries recruited by President Gbagbo:

* 2000 – Laurent Gbagbo takes over as president of Côte d ' Ivoire following a popular uprising against President Robert Guéï.

** Laurent Gbagbo, President of Cote d ' Ivoire

After northern candidate Alassane Ouattara was declared the victor of the 2010 Ivorian presidential election by the country's Independent Electoral Commission ( CEI ), the President of the Constitutional Council – an ally of Gbagbo – declared the results to be invalid and that Gbagbo was the winner.

Gbagbo founded the Ivorian Popular Front ( FPI ) in 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for President against Félix Houphouët-Boigny at the start of multi-party politics in 1990.

Gbagbo was then installed as President.

Gbagbo installed himself as President on 26 October.

He was again appointed as Prime Minister in February 2003 as part of a deal to end the country's 2002-2003 civil war, because he was widely considered to be a neutral figure ; however, many supporters of President Laurent Gbagbo accused him of not taking a strong stance against the rebels, despite their failure to disarm in October 2004, and demanded his resignation.

rebelling against the rule of President Laurent Gbagbo.

FPI was founded in exile in 1982 by history professor Laurent Gbagbo during the one-party rule of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

A second coup, following 2000 elections that made Laurent Gbagbo President, saw Coulibaly in a leadership position, after which he came into conflict with fellow military leader Guillaume Soro.

The contentious October 2000 elections, in which Ouattara was disqualified, thwarted Guéï's attempt to remain in power and made Laurent Gbagbo President of Côte d ' Ivoire.

* 28 June – Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, and Laurent Gbagbo, President of Côte d ' Ivoire, hold talks in Pretoria to advance peace in Côte d ' Ivoire.