Alassane Ouattara told reporters during a state visit to Senegal that he only accepted the help of a former rebel army on March 17, more than three months after he was declared the winner of last November’s election.
Ouattara spent those months holed up inside a hotel because the country’s entrenched ruler, Laurent Gbagbo, refused to leave office.
Gbagbo was finally toppled in April, after the armed group swept across the country in a two-week campaign marred by reports of massacres.
United Nations investigators said at least 330 people were killed in the western town of Duekoue, where reporters saw bodies at the bottom of wells and where the smell of death still hovers over the vegetation where corpses were dumped.
“We want to end impunity in Ivory Coast,” Ouattara said. “No one is above the law. All those that committed crimes of blood will be punished … There will be no exceptions.”
In Ivory Coast, a three-day period of mourning is being observed to honour the dead.
At least 1 000 people were killed in the postelection violence, first by the army under Gbagbo’s control and later by the soldiers fighting to install Ouattara, whose victory in last year’s poll was recognised by the UN, the United States and the African Union.
Gbagbo is now under house arrest in a village in the country’s north awaiting trial.