Mbeki ends Ivory Coast poll row talks without deal

IVORY COAST: Former South African leader Thabo Mbeki failed on Monday to settle an election row between Ivory Coast's presidential claimant Alassane Ouattara and incumbant Laurent Gbagbo, but made a plea for a peaceful solution.

Mbeki had aimed in two days of talks to defuse a power struggle enveloping the country since a poll which the electoral commission and international observers say Ouattara won.

Gbagbo has refused to concede after the election on Nov. 28, that was meant to reunite the former regional economic star after a 2002-03 civil war, backed by the military and the top legal body, which has the last word. But analysts warned the dispute could now pit the army against pro-Ouattara rebels, who told Reuters they would defend themselves from any attack.

"The African Union is very keen that peace can be sustained and every effort should be made to ensure this transition to democracy succeeds," Mbeki told journalists at Gbagbo's house before leaving, adding he would file a report to the union.

"Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) needs peace and needs democracy ... We indeed hope that the leadership of this country will do all that it can to ensure peace is maintained."

Ouattara's camp at the Golf Hotel, where he is holed up under U.N. protection, held its first 'council of ministers'.

"If Laurent Gbagbo agrees to leave power quietly, the ministers from his party would be welcome in the government we plan to lead," Guillaume Soro, Ivory Coast's premier who has pledged to serve Ouattara, told France's Europe 1 radio.

Small groups of Ouattara-supporters burned tyres and blockaded roads in Abidjan on Monday as police in riot gear patrolled the streets. There were no reports of violence after at least 10 were killed in clashes over the previous two weeks.

The military extended a curfew for an extra week, until Sunday, but relaxed the hours from 10 pm (2200 GMT) to 5 am.

The political deadlock gripped the world's top cocoa grower after the Constitutional Council run by a Gbagbo ally scrapped hundreds of thousands of votes from Ouattara strongholds, reversing provisional results giving him a victory.

U.S. President Barack Obama has sided with Ouattara, leading calls from the United Nations, France, the European Union, the African Union and West African bloc ECOWAS that Gbagbo accept the election commission outcome. ECOWAS leaders are due to hold an emergency summit on Ivory Coast on Tuesday.

Abidjan, Tuesday, Reuters