ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AFP) - Ivory Coast's biggest reggae star, Alpha Blondy, staged Sunday his first concert in his homeland since it was split by a failed 2002 coup, calling on his countrymen to put their bloody past behind them.

President Laurent Gbagbo and some 5,000 fans turned up for the Peace and Reconciliation Concert in the picturesque coastal town of Grand Bassam, which served as the country's capital in the early years of French colonial rule.

The dreadlocked and jean-clad Blondy kicked off the landmark concert with Jerusalem, one of his biggest hits.
"Ivory Coast needs all its children to accomplish a durable and lasting peace," Blondy said, before encouraging his "big brother," President Gbagbo, to address the excited crowd.

"I have come here to tell you that 2007 was a good year and it allowed us to stabilise the civil war and put an end to the conflict," Gbagbo said.

"We must have elections in 2008," he added.

Nearly 1,000 policemen were deployed at the sprawling venue for the 24-hour concert.

The world's top cocoa producer, Ivory Coast was split in half by a 2002 rebellion against Gbagbo, with international peacekeepers monitoring the north-south buffer zone that is in the process of being dismantled.

But prior to the unrest, the former French colony was hailed as a beacon of peace and prosperity in troubled west Africa and upheld as a continental model during the long rule of its founding president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny.

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