Abidjan - Opposition parties in Ivory Coast announced on Friday they would take no part in talks President Laurent Gbagbo had called to discuss naming a transitional prime minister in the troubled west African country.
"We don't feel concerned in this meeting," said Alphonse Ddedje Mady, the committee chairman of an opposition grouping called the Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (PHDP), named for the country's founding president.
Gbagbo had asked his political rivals to meet him in the afternoon for talks on a new interim government leader, making the invitation ahead of high tension in Abidjan triggered by a Thursday evening attack on a major police base by unidentified gunmen in civilian clothes.
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The economic capital was calm Friday after clashes at the Agban gendarmerie barracks in the working-class Adjame neighbourhood, where residents heard heavy automatic weapons fire for more than half an hour.
Lieutenant Colonel Rene Sacko, head of the inter-forces tactical command centre, told AFP that an unknown number of men had launched an assault that was fought off by the police, but military officials have since given no details or casualty figures, amid contradictory speculations in the press.
The PHDP groups the former ruling Ivory Coast Democratic Party with the Rally of Republicans, led by Muslim northerner Alassane Ouattara, and two small political parties, the Union for Democracy and Peace in Ivory Coast (UDPCI) and the Movement of Forces for the Future (MFA).
Ddjedje Mady said the opposition, part of which is aligned with rebels who have held the north of the divided nation for more than three years, had been asked to meet Gbagbo merely by a communique issued from the president's office and that was wrong.
"We didn't get any invitation with an agenda inviting us to a working session," he said. "You don't summon political parties by way of a press release."
Despite a November 22 visit by presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Mamadou Tandja of Niger and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa in a concerted bid to kickstart a stalled peace process, Ivorian political and rebel parties are unable to agree on who should head an interim government.
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