Ahoua Don Mello, spokesman for Gbagbo's government, also warned that military action by members of the Economic Community of West African States could put millions of regional immigrants in Ivory Coast in danger.

"The people of Ivory Coast will mobilise. This boosts our patriotism. This strengthens our faith in Ivorian nationalism," he said, a day after ECOWAS leaders demanded Gbagbo step aside or face military intervention.

The spokesman could not say whether Gbagbo would agree to meet a high-level delegation that the West African leaders said would come to try to persuade him to step down peacefully, but said he was ready for talks.

"We're always open to dialogue, but within strict respect of the laws and regulations of the Republic of Ivory Coast," he said. Gbagbo's camp regards him as the lawful and duly-elected president on the country.

But the international community has recognised his rival Alassane Ouattara as the winner of last month's presidential election, setting up a violent stand-off between the two camps and triggering armed clashes.

On Friday, ECOWAS leaders warned that if Gbagbo hangs on, "the community will be left with no alternative but to take other measures, including the use of legitimate force, to achieve the goals of the Ivorian people."

Gbagbo's spokesman said he did "not believe at all" that it would come to this, in particular because there are millions of West African immigrants who work in Ivory Coast's relatively prosperous cocoa-led economy.

"Ivory Coast is a country of immigration," he said. "All these countries have citizens in Ivory Coast, and they know if they attack Ivory Coast from the exterior it would become an interior civil war," he warned.

"Is Burkina Faso ready to welcome three million Burkinabe migrants back in their country of origin," he demanded, insisting that the ECOWAS states would not "attack themselves."

"I'd imagine they'd be sufficiently lucid to see that war is impossible."

The ECOWAS threat could make it harder for Gbagbo and his supporters in the state media to portray his struggle as that of a long-suffering African leader bravely taking on the rich West and the former colonial power France.

But Don Mello alleged the West frican states' latest act of "political delinquency" was part of a plot orchestrated by Paris, ratcheting up the regime's already instense anti-imperialist rhetoric.

"This will to recolonise the African continent will meet its end in Ivory Coast, unless they manage to exterminate all the Ivorians," he said.

No date has been publicly set for the ECOWAS delegation to make a last-ditch trip to Abidjan, and West African military chiefs are due to meet to study their options in terms of armed intervention.

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