Abidjan:
Ivory Coast's incumbent leader, Laurent Gbagbo defied calls to step aside and hand over power to his political rival, Alassane Ouattara on Sunday, saying he was only going to respect and abide "by the Ivorians' vote."
"I want the truth. Ivorians voted on November 28th, who was elected? That is it," he told AP Television.
The United Nations certified Ouattara as the winner of the disputed presidential election's runoff vote on November 28th, but a Gbagbo ally overturned those results by throwing out half a million ballots from Ouattara strongholds in the north.
The move angered people who had waited for years as officials settled who would be allowed to vote in the long-delayed election, differentiating between Ivorians with roots in neighbouring countries and foreigners.
For nearly a month, Gbagbo has now defied calls from the international community to concede defeat. The United Nations has said at least 173 people have been killed in violence over the vote, heightening fears that the country once divided in two could return to civil war.
Gbagbo accused the United Nations of not telling the full story after the international body reported that thousands of refugees have been fleeing across the border into neighbouring Liberia.
He claimed those who were fleeing to Liberia and Guinea were doing so out of fears of reprisals "as they voted for me, Gbagbo."
Gbagbo's comments echoed those made by his interior minister, who said earlier in the day it was "regrettable" that the ONUCI (United Nations Mission in Ivory Coast) "didn't give more details on the origins of the mass departures nor the causes."
Emile Guirieoulou alleged that the thousands of refugees arriving in Liberia had fled violence perpetrated by rebels who support Ouattara.
The UN refugee agency says at least 14,000 people have fled the violence and political chaos in Ivory Coast, some walking for up to four days with little food to reach neighbouring Liberia.
Gbagbo also dismissed the serious concern expressed by the UN about the involvement in Ivory Coast of foreign mercenaries from neighbouring Liberia and Angola.
He "categorically" denied the existence of any mercenary of Liberian origin, and said Angola "already denied the existence of Angolan mercenaries in Ivory Coast."
Gbagbo is not recognised by the international community as president and neither are any of his newly appointed ministers.
West African leaders are giving the man who refuses to leave Ivory Coast's presidency a final chance to hand over power and are threatening to remove Gbagbo by force if needed, though doubts exist about whether the operation could be carried out.
West African leaders from the regional bloc ECOWAS late on Friday threatened a military intervention if Gbagbo did not step down from Ivory Coast's presidency.
On Sunday, Sierra Leone's information ministry said that three leaders from the region would pay him a visit.
Gbagbo has shown few signs that he plans to go, though, and his security forces have been accused of being behind hundreds of arrests, and dozens of cases of disappearance and torture in recent weeks.
In recent days, the United Nations has expressed alarm about the actions of men who are believed to be Gbagbo loyalists.
The world body reported on Thursday that heavily armed forces allied with Gbagbo, who were joined by masked men with rocket launchers, were preventing people from getting to the village of N'Dotre, where the global body said "allegations point to the existence of a mass grave."
Gbagbo has been in power since 2000 and had already overstayed his mandate by five years when the long-delayed presidential election was finally held in October.
The vote was intended to help reunify the country, which was divided by the 2002-2003 civil war into a rebel-controlled north and a loyalist south.
Instead, the election has renewed divisions that threaten to plunge the country back into civil war.
While Ivory Coast was officially reunited in a 2007 peace deal, Ouattara still draws his support from the northern half of the country, where residents feel they are often treated as foreigners within their own country by southerners.