South African President Thabo Mbeki took his peace mission to Ivory Coast's rebel-held stronghold of Bouake today, where he was greeted by hundreds of people demanding President Laurent Gbagbo quit.
"We don't want Gbagbo," an excited crowd chanted at the airport as Mr Mbeki, wearing an open-necked white shirt, shook hands with the rebel leader Mr Guillaume Soro while South African military helicopters clattered overheard.
Some in the crowd waved banners calling for Mr Gbagbo's resignation, others wore T-shirts with photos of Mr Mbeki, on the second leg of his peace mission to the world's top cocoa grower.
Ivory Coast once had a prosperous, vibrant economy driven by cocoa exports and a thriving regional port which was the envy of its West African neighbours, but civil war sparked by an attempt to oust Mr Gbagbo in 2002 has cut the former French colony in two.
African leaders fear West Africa could plunge further into turmoil unless a peaceful solution is found to the crisis in a country bordering Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana.