Abidjan - Ivory Coast's long-awaited presidential election scheduled for later this month will be postponed, the country's Independent Electoral Commission confirmed on Wednesday.
"November 29 was really ideal but with all the arguments we had to sort out up to now, it will be slightly delayed," IEC president Robert Mambe told reporters, adding that he was not ready to announce a new date.
Mambe said the length of time taken to compile the provisional voter list meant the original November date would be improbable.
The IEC says it will publish the list next Monday, which features five million people from the more than six million who are eligible to vote.
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Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo said on October 30 that the vote would be delayed, citing the problems with the voting lists.
In all, 5.3 million people have been registered to vote on the provisional list, while the electoral commission has yet to verify the status of about one million others.
Fresh elections have been put off repeatedly since Gbagbo's current mandate expired in 2005 while the country was divided between the government-held south and the north, held by the rebel New Forces, who had tried to oust him in a September 2002 coup.
Gbagbo came to power in 2000 and has made peace with the New Forces, headed by Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, but he still only presides over half of the cocoa-rich nation. The rest remains in the hands of the former rebels. - Sapa-AFP
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