Ivorian assembly candidacy ruling due by Wednesday

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- Electoral officials in Ivory Coast must decide by Wednesday who can stand in a December 10 parliamentary election, a member of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) said on Monday.

Raphael Ouattara, a CNE commissioner and member of President Laurent Gbagbo's Socialist Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), told Reuters the commission had received some 800 applications from prospective candidates for the assembly's 225 seats.

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The would-be candidates include Muslim former prime minister Alassane Ouattara, who was barred from contesting the West African country's turbulent October 22 presidential election by the supreme court on nationality grounds.

Anyone the CNE rejects for the parliamentary poll can appeal to the supreme court, and any voter has the right to contest candidacies accepted by the CNE.

State television said on Monday that those barred from running for president need not be excluded from the parliamentary poll, which has less stringent criteria.

The supreme court barred Ouattara from the presidential poll, saying there were doubts about his mother's nationality and identity and that he had used the nationality of Burkina Faso earlier in his career.

State television said benefiting from another nationality was no obstacle for a parliamentary candidate provided they had never renounced their Ivorian nationality.

CNE officials declined to comment on the matter.

Ouattara's decision to run for president split the country along ethnic lines and sparked a social and political crisis.

The October poll, called to restore civilian rule after a December 1999 military coup, turned to violence after army ruler Robert Guei tried to rig the result in his favor. Mass street protests by supporters of the real winner Gbagbo toppled Guei.

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