I.Coast starts identity drive but poll doubts grow

By David Lewis

ABIDJAN, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast launched a drive on Wednesday to finish registering its population in time for polls on Nov. 30, but the main newspaper and an electoral official said it was already too late.

The presidential and parliamentary elections are meant to complete a tortuous peace process and help reunite the world's top cocoa grower, which was divided into a rebel-held north and government-controlled south by a 2002-03 civil war.

President Laurent Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro, a rebel leader who became his prime minister under a regionally-brokered peace deal last year, have maintained the polls are on track.

But as a final two-week operation began to register Ivorians with no identity papers, doubts mounted over the polls schedule.

"It is not possible," read the front page headline of Fraternite Matin, a pro-government daily that has been the country's main newspaper since it was founded in the 1960s.

"There is now no question -- the elections are not possible on this date," it added, accusing the election commission of failing to face the fact that delays in registering voters and disarming fighters ruled out holding polls as planned.

The U.S.-based National Democratic Institute said this month that the polls were unlikely to be held on time.

Some Ivorians lost identity cards in the war but many, especially in the north where many migrant workers hail from, never had them or were unable to replace them when they expired.

The question of their nationality has been central to the conflict. Migrant workers from the north and neighbouring states were welcomed in boom times but victimised when economic crises hit the country, one of West Africa's biggest economies.



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Following the identification process, Ivorians must register to vote and, under the election law, voter lists should be published three months before polling day, meaning by Aug. 30.

"I don't think it is possible to hold the poll on time. We are still at the starting point," said an official at Ivory Coast's election commission, who asked not to be named.

The official said agreements signed to end the crisis could allow some flexibility in applying the election law, but the scale of delays still rendered a poll impossible in November.

"Of the 6,000 kits needed to register the voters, only 1,500 have arrived in the country. We need money to train and put people on the ground but it is not there yet," he added.

Some 40 billion CFA francs ($89 million) are needed for registration, which is being assisted by a French company, SAGEM. Elections themselves are expected to cost nearly 37 billion CFA more, with donors to provide all but 15 billion.

The worst fighting ended in the early months of the war and since last year's peace deal U.N. and French peacekeepers have pulled out of a buffer zone between north and south.

But efforts to demobilise rebels and militia have stalled. Dissident rebels in the north have protested over payments in the last two months, increasing concerns about security.

The United Nations, which is providing logistical support for polls, declined to comment on whether they were viable.

"It is very urgent ... they must start the identification of voters as it is a very important step in the process," said U.N. peacekeeping mission spokesman Hamadoun Toure. (Editing by Alistair Thomson)