Fighting Flares In Western Ivory Coast

Fighting has flared in western Ivory Coast, as negotiations remain stalled over ending a civil war that began in September.

The western-based rebels Sunday accused government forces of using helicopter gunships to attack civilians in the town of Bin-Houye near the border with Liberia during fighting Saturday. Army officials said they had delivered what they called an "appropriate response" to rebel attacks.

Liberia's government has also recently accused Ivory Coast government forces of launching attacks into Liberia. An Ivorian army official says the whole region is what he calls a "mess." All sides accuse each other of using Liberian mercenaries.

The fighting comes as northern-based Ivorian rebels tell the French news agency they will refuse to enter a government of national unity if they are not given the ministries of defense and the interior as promised when a deal was reached in France in January. The army is refusing to hand over these ministries.

A French-monitored ceasefire has been generally holding for several months on the northern front, but there has been sporadic fighting in the west. Also Saturday, journalists from the AFP news agency and France 2 television say they were pushed around and insulted by military officers and civilians while they were trying to cover a news conference in Abidjan. Some tried to steal the journalists' equipment, prompting the reporters to leave.

At the news conference, President Laurent Gbagbo denied government involvement in alleged death squads, which were detailed in a U.N. report last month. President Gbagbo also said he was suing two French newspapers, Le Monde and La Croix, over articles they recently published about the death squads, implicating his government, the presidential guard and an ethnic militia.