Annan, Gbagbo to hold summit on Ivory Coast polls

BANJUL, July 2 (Reuters) UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will meet Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and regional leaders on Wednesday to try to ensure an October deadline is met for elections in the divided state, Annan's spokesman said.

Ivory Coast, split into a rebel-held north and government south since a brief 2002-03 civil war, is due to hold elections by October. 31, but is way behind on disarmament and voter identification programmes that must be completed first.

''This is really to see how they can meet the timetable,'' Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Sunday.

Annan and Gbagbo agreed to hold the summit at a meeting on Saturday on the fringes of the African Union conference in Gambia's capital Banjul.

The leaders of Nigeria, Ghana, Niger and Burkina Faso also attended Saturday's meeting, along with AU Commission Chairman Alpha Oumar Konare. Some of them would also be at Wednesday's meeting in Ivory Coast's main city Abidjan, Annan said.

''This is part of a series of consultations that we have been carrying out in our determination to ensure that we stick to the timetable that we established for elections in Cote d'Ivoire,'' Annan said in comments circulated by Dujarric.

War broke out in Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa grower, in September 2002 when an attempt to overthrow Gbagbo failed but left rebels in control of the north of the country.

Fighting has largely stopped since 2003, but efforts to reunite the country have stalled over a series of disputes between Gbagbo's government and the rebels.

Gbagbo's mandate should have ended last October, but elections could not be held as the country was still divided.

A UN-backed proposal extended Gbagbo's mandate by a year and installed central banker Charles Konan Banny as prime minister with enhanced powers to ensure elections take place by October. 31.

But a series of deadlines to disarm rebels and pro-government militia fighters have passed, and many diplomats fear there is too little time to reunite the country and organise credible elections by the deadline.

REUTERS CH RK1820