West Africa leaders to meet Obama and Ban on Ivory Coast

ABUJA (Reuters) - A delegation from West African regional bloc ECOWAS will meet U.S. President Barack Obama and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week to discuss the crisis in Ivory Coast, Nigeria's foreign minister said.

A spokesman for Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma, who will lead the delegation, said the aim was to push for a U.N. Security Council resolution backing the threat of force to oust incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo.

Gbagbo is locked in a power struggle with Alassane Ouattara, who was declared winner of a November 28 election by United Nations-certified results before they were overturned by a pro-Gbagbo legal body, which alleged fraud.

"If you don't move firmly, there's a chance you'll get more of this year. We don't want to create a bad precedent," Koroma's press secretary Unisa Sesay said.

Africa is due to hold around 20 presidential elections over the next 18 months and regional leaders are concerned the impasse could encourage poll disputes elsewhere.

Nigeria's state news agency said the ECOWAS delegation would meet Obama in Washington on Wednesday before heading to the United Nations in New York to meet Ban and Security Council members on Thursday.

International efforts to end the stand-off in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer, have so far failed.

ECOWAS, which has sent two mediation missions to the country without success, has threatened to use force to remove Gbagbo.

Nigerian Foreign Minister Odein Ajumogobia said on Monday Nigeria wanted U.N. backing for an ECOWAS intervention to prevent the former French colony slipping into a war that could destabilise the region.

"Gbagbo must be made to understand that there is a very real prospect of overwhelming military capability bearing down on him and his cohorts," Ajumogobia wrote in the newspaper This Day, adding that the use of force could include a naval blockade.

The United States and the European Union have imposed travel bans and other sanctions on Gbagbo and his inner circle but fellow West African nations will need to take a lead if there is to be any attempt to remove him by force, diplomats say.

Britain has said it would give support at the United Nations for the use of force if West African nations wanted it but there has been opposition from other U.N. members, including Russia.

(Additional reporting by Simon Akam in Freetown, Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Tim Pearce)