UNITED NATIONS, March 31 (UPI) -- The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast is authorized to use "all necessary means" to protect civilians, the U.N. Security Council declared.
Ivory Coast has been embroiled in violent political conflict since November elections. Incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo refuses to stand down despite independent declarations that Alassane Ouattara is the victor.
Groups from the International Crisis Group to the United Nations warn the conflict is characteristic of civil war.
The Security Council passed Resolution 1975 that calls on Gbagbo to immediately stand down and freezes his assets and those of his family and top supporters.
The resolution stresses full support for the peacekeeping mission there to use "all necessary means to carry out its mandate to protect civilians … including to prevent the use of heavy weapons."
Nearly 500 people were reported killed and at least 1 million are displaced from the commercial capital Abidjan since the November vote.
Gerard Araud, the French envoy to the United Nations, said the sense of urgency in Ivory Coast, which gained independence from France in 1960, was obvious.
Getting Gbagbo to step down, he said, was "the only way to avoid a full-fledged civil war and maybe bloody violence in the streets of Abidjan."
