WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (AFP) - The United States is urging the nearly 3,000 US
citizens remaining in the Ivory Coast to leave the country, fearing a
"meltdown" in the situation there as a three-week old uprising intensifies,
State Department officials said Friday.
   Diplomats at the US embassy in Abidjan are contacting the some 2,800
Americans still believed to be in the country to tell them to leave, the
officials told AFP on condition of anonymity.
   "Our people are stressing the advisability of departing Cote d'Ivoire
now and pointing out the potentially devastating consequences to
individuals and families if a meltdown of the political-military situation
should occur and commercial means of evacuation suddenly become
unavailable," one official said.
   "All opportunities will be taken to drive home the need for temporary
departure in view of the fluid, uncertain environment prevailing in Abidjan
and elsewhere," the official said.
   About 700 of the approximately 3,500 US citizens in Ivory Coast have
left the west African nation following a September 22 State Department
warning that urged them to do so, a second official said.
   State Department spokesman Richard Boucher would not address specifics
of the situation for Americans in the Ivory Coast but said: "We continue to
urge Americans to heed our advice."
   On September 24, the department instituted an "authorized departure"
scheme under which non-essential US diplomats and the families of embassy
employees are allowed to leave the country at Washington's expense.
   Friday's call for the remaining US citizens to leave came as rebellious
troops vow to launch a sweeping offensive against the government and the
World Food program warned that the security situation in the Ivory Coast
was "becoming increasingly volatile."
   The rebels have seized half the country since they mutinied on September
19 and outside mediation attempts have thus far failed.
   Senegal's foreign minister was to have met Friday with the insurgents in
the hope of preventing all-out civil war, but that meeting was postponed
until Saturday.
   He is believed to be carrying new peace proposals from Senegal's
President Abdoulaye Wade, the chairman of the 15-nation Economic Community
of West African States (ECOWAS).
   Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, in an address to the nation on
Tuesday, said that Wade had come up with a new "draft proposal" which he
had accepted.
   But in Korhogo, the main town in the predominantly Muslim north, rebel
leader Messamba Kone said the insurgents had ruled out a ceasefire and
wanted Gbagbo to quit to make way for a transitional government.
   The rebels, former soldiers who have returned from exile and mutineers,
want an end to discrimination against mainly Muslim northerners in a
country traditionally ruled by Christian southerners.
   The insurgents hold virtually the entire north, and key towns in the
centre, west and east.

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