Police fire tear gas at protesters in Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of anti-government protesters in eastern Ivory Coast on Monday, paralyzing the city of Abengourou and forcing several cocoa warehouses to close in the top world supplier.

The demonstrations follow President Laurent Gbagbo's dissolution of the government and electoral commission on Friday in a move that is almost certain to delay long-awaited presidential elections set for March.

"We have decided to protest against Gbagbo's decision to dissolve the government and the electoral commission. It is dictatorship," said Abdoulaye Ba, one of the demonstration leaders in the city of Abengourou.

He said thousands of youths had gathered before riot police fired tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. Police had tear-gassed about a hundred opposition supporters demonstrating in Abidjan on Saturday.

Rising tensions in West Africa's former economic powerhouse threaten to disrupt a cocoa industry that accounts for about a third of global supply, and could prevent an election that the World Bank this month warned is necessary for comprehensive debt relief.

NEW GOVERNMENT

Ivory Coast's prime minister met with the heads of the U.N. mission and Gbagbo's party on Monday over the country's deepening political crisis, and is expected to name a new cabinet in the coming days.

Opposition leaders reiterated a call not to recognize Gbagbo, whom they accuse of staging a coup, as president and said they would not accept a new electoral commission.

"The independent electoral commission must be re-established and must become functional again to take us back to where we were," Alphonse Djedje Mady, secretary general of the Ivory Coast Democratic Party (PDCI), said in a statement.

"We won't wait for another commission of a different form. We want the commission that was there to finish its work."

Opposition parties have called for massive protests nationwide, raising fears of escalating turmoil.

The election, which has been repeatedly postponed since 2005, is badly needed to end years of political instability following a 2002-03 civil war that split the country and stifled investment in one of the region's top economies.

Gbagbo had accused electoral commission boss Robert Mambe, an opposition party member, of attempting to add 429,000 names to the voter register that did not have their Ivorian identity cross-checked in an attempt to boost the opposition vote.

Opposition candidates Henri Konan Bedie and Alassane Ouettara accuse Gbagbo of deliberately creating obstacles for the process in order to keep himself in power.

After years of delays because of political bickering some Ivorians are starting to doubt polls will ever take place.

Rebel movements that have grown wealthy from smuggling fiefdoms since the end of the civil war appear in no hurry to end the current political stalemate.

A cocoa farmer in Abengourou, Joseph Amani, told Reuters by telephone that protests in the city had led most of the warehouse operators to close fearing violence.

"Most of the buying stations are closed and people have gone home fearing acts of violence," he said.

(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Peter Millership)