Cote d'Ivoire forces are to immediately pull back from front-lines, the presidential spokesman Desire Tagro said Sunday after a day of sudden air and ground clashes with the country's former colonial ruler, France.

"We are going immediately to pull back to the confidence zone,"Tagro said, referring to a buffer zone manned by French and United Nations peacekeepers between rebel north and loyalist south.

Cote d'Ivoire would ask the UN Security Council for action against France, Tagro said, saying, "We are faced with aggression by one country against another country. We are going to inform theentire world ... that France has come to attack us.''

Clashes erupted on Saturday between French forces stationed in Cote d'Ivoire and Cote d'Ivoire government troops after nine French soldiers were killed in an offensive. Two Cote d'Ivoire fighter jets raided one of the French positions in the central rebel stronghold of Bouake on Saturday afternoon, killing nine soldiers and injuring dozens more of its Unicorn peacekeeping force.

Abidjan said it was a mistake of aim made by pilots of two Sukhoi-25 fighters, which threw a 250-kg bomb at a French position manned by 1,000 soldiers.

Cote d'Ivoire government forces have been pounding some rebel-held positions in the north since Thursday. In response to the attack, French forces destroyed two invading Sukhoi-25 fighters and one MI-24 helicopter.

Cote d'Ivoire parliament speaker Mamadou Koulibaly said on Sunday the government is ready to cease fire again and enter negotiations,

"Let's cease fire on the front and talk,'' National Assembly President Koulibaly said on state television, adding President Laurent Gbagbo "is open to discussions, to negotiations.''

However, France has planned to send 300 more troops as well as 60 paramilitary gendarmes as reinforcements to the western Africannation in addition to the 300 men already announced, the Defense Ministry said on the same day.

Source: Xinhua