General Henri Poncet was suspended along with Colonel Eric Burgaud and an unnamed decommissioned officer.

The three were suspended for "serious breaches of the law, military regulations and orders," said ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau.

Poncet, who is currently based in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux, and the two others are suspected of having "covered up the death of an Ivorian man who was detained by French troops," on May 17 when they were stationed in the troubled west African country as part of French peacekeeping forces.

Bureau said the Ivorian had "repeatedly committed crimes against the civilian population".

However, it had been "established that all the facts (concerning his death) which are known now had not been communicated at the time", he added.

No further details on the case were officially given.

In a statement issued May 17, the ministry had said that a man identified as Mahe and "known as a highway gang leader wanted for many acts of cruelty committed in May including at least five dead, nine wounded and four rapes" had died.

Mahe opened fire on members of the Unicorn forces who responded in self-defense, the statement added.

The man was seriously wounded and arrested but died from his injuries on the way to a hospital at Man in westeren Ivory Coast, it had said.

The cause of the death was later said to be different from what was originally reported, leading to an official investigation, a military source told AFP Monday.

"What we know, if it is true, is particularly intolerable for a military leader," the source added.

Poncet headed Operation Unicorn from May 2004 when 4,000 French troops, supported by UN forces, were involved in peacekeeping operations after a failed coup in Ivory Coast in September 2002.

He was replaced in June by General Erik Irastorza.

Before his Ivory Coast mission Poncet led a multinational brigade in Serbia's UN-administered Kosovo province and, after February 2001, French special operations.

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