Fighters loyal to Mr. Ouattara moved into Abidjan on Thursday after a quick offensive through Ivory Coast. Pro-Gbagbo forces surrendered the airport to the nearly ten thousand United Nations peacekeeping troops in the country.
Mr. Ouattara called for the support of all government troops.
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The country is calling you, he said.
Years ago, Alassane Ouattara lived and studied in the United States. He received a doctorate in economics at the University of Pennsylvania in the early nineteen seventies. He worked for the International Monetary Fund and the Central Bank of West African States.
Mr. Ouattara, who is Muslim, was born in central Ivory Coast in nineteen forty-two. He served as prime minister in the early nineteen nineties. But questions about his citizenship kept him out of the presidential election in two thousand.
Laurent Gbagbo was born to a Catholic family in the south in nineteen forty-five. He attended Paris' Sorbonne University and later spent time in exile in the French capital. In nineteen seventy-one, he was arrested in Ivory Coast for "subversive teaching." He continued his activism after returning in nineteen eighty-eight.
The former history professor came to power in two thousand as a supporter of full democracy. But hopes for a new kind of African leadership fell as elections were repeatedly postponed.
Mr. Gbagbo himself became president after a disputed election and political unrest. But after two years he faced a rebellion in the north. A peace treaty in two thousand seven led to the presidential election last year. Mr. Gbagbo won the first vote. But he refused to accept defeat in a runoff election.
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