nationalists as a manifestation of neocolonialism, leading to sustained public demonstrations and, in November 2004, fatal clashes between French and Ivorian forces. The United Nations (UN) was involved in the conflict first through a political mission, the UN Mission in Côte d'Ivoire, and then through an ambitious peacekeeping mission, the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire, which deployed in April 2004 and absorbed the smaller contingent of peacekeepers that had been deployed earlier by the Economic Community of West African States. The violence had largely subsided by the end of 2004, but the country remained under de facto partition – with a rebel-held north and a government-held south – while the political crisis continued. Though the multi-party Linas-Marcoussis Accord established a power-sharing Government of National Reconciliation in early 2003, its provisions regarding disarmament and political reform were not implemented. A comprehensive political settlement was finally reached on 4 March 2007, when Gbagbo and the New Forces signed the Ouagadougou Peace Agreement in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. However, when Ivory Coast held presidential elections in 2010 – its first since 2000 – Gbagbo refused to accept the result, sparking renewed political crisis and the beginning of the Second Ivorian Civil War. Origins and context Leadership succession When Ivorian President Félix Houphouët-Boigny died in December 1993, the end of his thirty-three-year presidency inaugurated a prolonged "crisis of succession", which destabilised Ivorian politics for the remainder of the decade. Since Ivory Coast's independence from France in 1960, Houphouët-Boigny had maintained Ivorian political and economic stability using mechanisms largely dependent on his own personal charisma, networks, and so-called Françafrique connections; the country lacked established mechanisms to regulate democratic competition. As required by the constitution, Houphouët-Boigny was succeeded by Henri Konan Bédié, the President of the National Assembly, who also replaced Houphouët-Boigny at the head of the ruling Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI, French: Parti démocratique de la Côte d'Ivoire). However, ahead of the 1995 presidential election, opposition politicians began to organise for democratic regime change in open and competitive elections. One powerful opposition leader was Laurent Gbagbo, whose Ivorian Popular Front (FPI, Front populaire ivoirien) had long agitated for democratisation under Houphouët-Boigny. Another was Alassane Ouattara, Houphouët-Boigny's Prime Minister, who had launched an abortive challenge to Bédié's leadership in the weeks after Houphouët-Boigny's death, and who in 1994 split from PDCI to establish his own party, Rally of the Republicans (RDR, Rassemblement des républicains). Both