Ivorian election loser agrees to talks with victor Ouattara

Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo has agreed to further talks over a disputed election and has promised to lift a blockade around the base of rival Alassane Ouattara, it emerged said last night.

"Mr Laurent Gbagbo agreed to negotiate a peaceful end to the crisis without any preconditions. He also pledged to immediately lift the blockade around Hotel Du Golf, the temporary headquarters of Mr Alassane Ouattara," the Economic Community Of West African States said.

It said Mr Ouattara, who has been widely recognised as the winner of the 28 November election, had "indicated his willingness to ensure a dignified exit" for Mr Gbagbo, provided he accepted that he had lost.

Nigeria's president Goodluck Jonathan, the chairman of the 15-nation regional bloc ECOWAS, said a solution to Ivory Coast's political crisis would take time.

"Anything that has to do with crisis in a nation takes time," Mr Jonathan said in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, where meetings were ongoing yesterday with leaders from Benin, Cape Verde and Sierra Leone. "Don't expect that if there is a major crisis in a country, you just jump in in one week and the matter is resolved."

The regional bloc has threatened to use military force to remove Mr Gbagbo, who has clung to power more than a month after the United Nations said he lost the presidential run-off vote to rival Mr Ouattara after a decade in power. The delegation's first effort last week to force him into exile failed.

Colonel Mohammed Yerima, a Nigerian military spokesman, said defence chiefs from ECOWAS member states met last week to begin discussing military action if talks fail.

Analysts have questioned how quickly ECOWAS could mobilise a force and whether they could remove Mr Gbagbo without a full-scale invasion.