PARIS -- Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore sought Saturday to cool the ongoing conflict with neighboring Ivory Coast, saying that he would not precipitate a conflict unless his country was in "extreme danger".

"I fervently wish to calm things down. There are so many Burkinabe people living in Ivory Coast that we would be fighting against ourselves," he said in an interview published in Saturday's ***Figaro*** magazine.

"A war is not my choice: Burkina would have to be in extreme danger, which is not the case right now," the president told AFP.

"The French military presence (in Ivory Coast) is a good thing. It is largely respected, those which don't are dealt with. Without this presence Abidjan would today be ablaze and awash with blood, and all contact would have to cease. I hope that the pan-African force which will replace them will have equally strong powers of dissuation."

A west African force in Ivory Coast, which is meant to replace French troops monitoring a four-week old cease-fire between the government and rebels, will consist of 1,264 soldiers from Senegal, Ghana, Togo, Niger and Benin.

Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has repeatedly accused a "foreign country" of helping the rebels who now control the northern half of the country. Gbagbo also said last month that he has known for a long time that "a coup was being plotted from Burkina." Asked about reports of the massacre of Burkinabe Ivorians, Compaore said: "Yes. By the army and the military police, by the private militias. On the other hand, Ivorians have hidden Burkinabes to protect them from violence. Among the 300,000 people who have sought refuge in Burkina Faso over the past two years some have no Burkinabe roots at all. The Ivorian authorities have created this (ethnic) division to keep themselves in power."

Compaore said that the crisis had started in 2000 when Gbagbo won an election which excluded the main opposition figures "representing 80 percent of the population".

"In order to stay in power, Laurent Gbagbo engineered internal destablization and tried to export his problems, Torpedoing West-African unity," he added.

The Ivory Coast is an ethnic mosaic, like the rest of Africa, he said. The concept of "Ivority" was invented to justify all goals and to create a myth.

"The presence of 120 ethnic groups didn't stop (former Ivorian President Felix) Houphouet-Boigny from turning his country into the motor of Western Africa between 1960 and 1990.

In an interview with AFP last month, Gbagbo denounced the passive complicity of his Burkinabe counterpart in the Ivorian crisis.

The Ivorian press regularly denounces Burkina Faso for supporting rebels who occupy the northern half of Ivory Coast.

Ivory Coast rebels on Friday again rejected a West African peace plan, and said they also opposed the deployment of a regional peacekeeping force until their political demands are met.

The rebels, who came to power in the north following a bloody army mutiny, said the peace proposals were unacceptable because it would ensure President Gbagbo of control over the whole of the country.