African leaders convened an emergency summit on Cote d'Ivoire's crisis yesterday while the country's president was holed up in his mansion.

　　President jacques Chirac of France, Cote d'Ivoire's former colonial ruler, took an increasingly hard-line stance against President Laurent Gbagbo's government, calling it a "questionable regime."

　　France would keep its 4,000 peacekeepers in the West African nation, Chirac told a youth conference in Marseilles, saying, "We do not want to allow a system to develop that would only lead to anarchy or a regime of a fascist nature."

　　France's heavy criticism, and African efforts to resolve the crisis, came following last week's five-day spate of anti-foreigner rioting that sent Westerners fleeing Cote d'Ivoire.

　　Cote d'ivoire said it was sending its National Assembly president, Mamadou Koulibaly, to an emergency summit called by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in Nigeria's capital, Abuja.

　　Presidents of Senegal, Ghana, Togo and Gabon also had arrived or were arriving for the Abuja summit.

　　France has said it holds Gbagbo personally responsible for the recent deadly confrontations between his government and supporters and French troops. The Ivorian leader is not known to have left his mansion since the crisis began on November 6.

　　"The country is in crisis. He prefers to be here, to be ready for any eventuality," spokesman Desire Tagro said of Gbagbo.

　　Fearing an overthrow attempt by France, the government-allied Young Patriots public militias behind much of last week's anti-foreigner attacks has vowed to keep up a constant vigil around Gbagbo's mansion.

　　In a move likely to anger both France and much of his own army, Gbagbo on late Saturday fired a popular moderate general as head of Cote d'Ivoire's military.

　　Gbagbo replaced General Mathias Doue with Colonel Major Phillipe Mangou, the field commander responsible for an air campaign two weeks ago on Cote d'Ivoire's rebel-held north.

　　Cote d'ivoire warplanes bombed a French military post in the rebel north on November 6. The airstrike killed nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker, plunging the country into its current crisis.

　　(The Associated Press)