Abidjan –  Army chiefs who fought for Cote d’Ivoire’s  former leader Laurent Gbagbo pledged their loyalty to his rival Alassane Ouattara on Tuesday, helping the chances of an end to conflict a day after his forces captured Gbagbo.

Gbagbo’s arrest on Monday ended a four-month power struggle that had descended into all-out conflict

But Ouattara recognised internationally as the nation’s president now faces a huge task reuniting a divided country

In a boost to his legitimacy, Ouattara won the backing of Gbagbo’s former military top brass, his TCI television station said.

It said that Philippe Mangou, Gbagbo’s former army chief of staff, as well as “all the generals of the ground, air and navy forces” had sworn their loyalty to Ouattara.

His aide de camp told Reuters Mangou had called on all police and security forces to back Ouattara after talks at Ouattara’s headquarters in the main city Abidjan.

The backing of the military is crucial if Ouattara, who won a November presidential election according to UN-certified results, is to finally begin asserting his authority after Gbagbo’s exit.

Ouattara’s forces captured Gbagbo, who had refused to step down, after French helicopter gunships, tanks and troops closed on the bunker where he had been holed up for the past week.

That has left Ouattara as the sole leader in charge of the country, although analysts say it may not be enough to stop violence and heal deep wounds.

“I call on my fellow countrymen to abstain from all forms of reprisal and violence,” Ouattara said in a televised speech late on Monday, calling for “a new era of hope”.

“Our country has turned a painful page in its history,” he said, urging marauding youth militias to lay down their weapons and promising to restore security to the battered nation.

Ethnic violence has festered during Ouattara’s tug-of-war with Gbagbo, particularly in the West, with hundreds of people killed as both sides in the conflict committed atrocities against civilians, aid groups say.

Ouattara said Gbagbo, his wife and aides who have been detained would be prosecuted in Cote d’Ivoire.

But he also promised a South African-styled Truth and Reconciliation Commission to shed light on all crimes and human rights abuses.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on Ouattara to form a national unity government to help reconcile the country’s divisions, his spokesman said.

A Gbagbo aide said only negotiations with Gbagbo’s camp would spare further turmoil.

“There must be negotiations, talks with Gbagbo who is the only one who can prevent Cote d’Ivoire from plunging into violence,” Pascal Affi N’Guessan, head of Gbagbo’s FPI party, told Radio France International.

Gbagbo had been taken to Ouattara’s headquarters at Abidjan’s Golf Hotel on Monday.

UN spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters on Tuesday he had since been moved out of the city, without giving further details.

UN security staff were with him, helping ensure his physical safety.

On Monday after his arrest, he appeared on Ouattara’s TCI television looking submissive and startled, and called for an end to the fighting.

It is not clear whether pro-Gbagbo militias, who said they would fight to the bitter end and who still control parts of Abidjan, would heed calls to lay down their weapons.

Nor was it clear if the 46 per cent of Ivorians who voted for Gbagbo in the election would accept his defeat.

Residents in the Northern Abidjan neighbourhood of Yopougon said armed militias were still roaming the streets there.

“Last night there were gunshots,” resident Jacques Kouakou, told Reuters by telephone. “When we woke up this morning we found that 14 youths from the neighbourhood had been shot dead.”

In the city of four million, where people were trapped in their homes with little food or water as fighting raged for 10 days, Ouattara faces a long list of challenges.

Dwindling supplies as well as frequent power cuts and a shortage of medicines have fuelled fears of a humanitarian disaster unless authorities can act swiftly.

But an end to the standoff could pave the way for a resumption of cocoa exports, previously blocked by sanctions and fighting.

The French government said on Tuesday it would give the country 400 million euros in financial aid to help residents and restart public services in Abidjan.

The World Bank said it hoped it could move forward on writing off the country’s debt.

The November poll was meant to draw a line under a 2002-03 war which left the country split in two.

Instead it reignited the conflict, killing more than 1,000 people and displacing one million.

The final death toll could to run into the thousands.

Ouattara’s legitimacy may be tarnished by accusations that his forces killed hundreds as they swept through the country to reach Abidjan, something that his aides deny.

He also faces questions about the role played by former colony France in securing his rival’s arrest.

A column of more than 30 French armoured vehicles moved on Gbagbo’s residence in Abidjan early on Monday after French and UN helicopter gunships pounded the compound overnight.

Witnesses said Ouattara’s forces joined French ground troops advancing on the compound.

France and Ouattara’s camp insisted it was his forces that arrested Gbagbo, eager to counter claims by Gbagbo’s aides that Ouattara was a foreign-backed stooge.

Police sources said on Tuesday a former Gbagbo’s interior minister had died from wounds sustained after he was beaten up during the assault on Gbagbo’s residence.

“We have seen a coup organised by the French army,” said N’Guessan.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Tuesday French forces had no need to stay in Cote d’Ivoire over the long term. (Reuters/NAN)