French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy on Wednesday urged Cote d'Ivoire to conduct its elections on Oct. 30 as scheduled.

A show of military "force is never a good solution, in Africa as elsewhere," said the French minister at France Inter radio, calling for the United Nations and the international community to monitor the elections, and to ensure the pressures that "we can exercise, the 10,000 (peacekeeping) men, are in place."

The poll "should be carried out incontestably. ... I have said recently to an Ivorian government member: it is absolutely necessary that the international community takes the responsibility to observe the elections to be sure that the elections would take place in a totally correct way."

The United Nations' special envoy, a Swede named Pierre Schori, has denounced Tuesday "all declarations calling for the overthrow of the institutions" in Cote d'Ivoire, after Mathias Doue, Ivorian former chief of staff of the loyalist forces, called for the departure of President Laurent Gbagbo.

On Friday General Doue vowed to use "any means" to remove Gbagbo from power.

"If the international community refuses to commit to getting Gbagbo to leave quietly, I will do so by any means," he told Radio France International in an interview.

Source: Xinhua