Mr. Ouattara called for reconciliation and peace in a country that was once one of Africa’s richest but that has been devastated by years of unrest, political division and civil war.
“The time has arrived for Ivorians to come together,” Mr. Ouattara, a former economist and banker, said in a speech that did not deviate from his habitually austere manner. “Dear brothers and sisters, let’s celebrate peace. Like the great people we are, we are going to reunite. Yes, we are going to come together. Let us learn to live together again.”
The country is still reeling from a four-month armed standoff that killed as many as 3,000 people, according to officials and human rights groups, and that sent tens of thousands of refugees fleeing violence into neighboring lands. About 160,000 are still in exile in Liberia, according to the International Rescue Committee.
Sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United States and regional governments had crippled the economy as President Laurent Gbagbo, who decisively lost the presidential election in November, refused to give up office.
Life is slowly returning to a semblance of normalcy. Banks have reopened, the nation’s vital cocoa exports have resumed and civil servants have returned to their desks with two months’ back pay.
Mr. Ouattara must govern under the burden of multiple handicaps. The country is still split between his supporters and those of Mr. Gbagbo, who received 46 percent of the vote in the election; whole villages and cocoa farms in the west remain devastated; and Mr. Ouattara was installed largely by foreign forces.
Months of African diplomacy proved ineffectual in dislodging Mr. Gbagbo, and Mr. Ouattara’s fighters played a secondary role. Ultimately, it was the French missile attacks against Mr. Gbagbo’s heavy-weapons installations that led to his defeat.
France’s central role was recognized at the ceremony in Yamoussoukro when its president, Nicolas Sarkozy, in the audience, was the first head of state to be saluted by Mr. Ouattara, and received sustained applause. Yet much of the population, especially Mr. Gbagbo’s supporters, resent the former colonial master and consider Mr. Ouattara as France’s man.
About 20 heads of state attended the ceremony, including African leaders who have clung to office for decades and are themselves beneficiaries of disputed or fraudulent elections. The event took place in Yamoussoukro, the native village of Ivory Coast’s founding president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, and its official capital, although Abidjan is the main commercial city and center of government.
Mr. Gbagbo remains under house arrest in the northern town of Korhogo, where he has been interrogated by Ouattara officials with a view to possible prosecution, and about 200 members of his government are also to be questioned, according to officials.
Mr. Gbagbo’s wife, Simone, a powerful influence in his government, has been interrogated in a separate location.
Mr. Ouattara has promised a South African-style “dialogue, truth and reconciliation” commission to look into the conflict, and he has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate crimes committed “since Nov. 28,” the date of the election whose result Mr. Gbagbo refused to acknowledge.
Mr. Ouattara’s call for the investigation to include “all of Ivorian territory” reiterates his position that any atrocities committed by forces that eventually declared their loyalty to him, including a massacre in which hundreds died in Duékoué in the west, should also be punished. Nonetheless, according to Human Rights Watch, “the majority of abuses during the first three months were by forces under Gbagbo’s control” and “probably amounted to crimes against humanity.”
Indeed, the civilian population in Abidjan was repeatedly attacked, over the course of months, by uniformed men directly under Mr. Gbagbo’s control, in what appeared to be deliberate state policy. The killings of Gbagbo supporters that took place at the end of the conflict were carried out by ragtag forces that only belatedly swung to Mr. Ouattara.
Mr. Ouattara, a former prime minister and deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, faces the immense task of rebuilding a country damaged by civil war, 10 years of what is widely acknowledged as the corrupt leadership of Mr. Gbagbo and fierce ethnic divisions. The new government filed suit in Swiss courts this month against Mr. Gbagbo and his entourage to recover tens of millions of dollars in assets.
It was less than three weeks ago that the last pro-Gbagbo mercenaries were finally rooted out of Abidjan, fleeing across the lagoons to the west and killing dozens as they went. United Nations investigators later discovered a mass grave containing some 68 bodies in the neighborhood where the Gbagbo forces had been entrenched.