OUAGADOUGOU (AFP) -- Eleven west African presidents meeting in Burkina Faso Friday welcomed an "initiative" by Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo to "engage in dialogue" with rebel leader Guillaume Soro.

They also expressed their "preoccupation with the worsening of the crisis in Guinea" where five people have been killed since the start of a general strike on January 10, and elected Burkina Faso's head of state Blaise Compaore to head the regional ECOWAS grouping for one year. In a final communique issued after the summit late Friday the leaders "welcomed the initiative taken by President Laurent Gbagbo and asked the chairman of ECOWAS to facilitate this dialogue to dynamize the peace process."

On December 19 Gbagbo had proposed the setting up of a "direct dialogue" with the rebels, who have controlled the north of Ivory Coast since an attempted coup in September 2002.

"The crisis that started in 2002 in Ivory Coast unfortunately continues to affect this brother nation and to concern ECOWAS," the outgoing chairman of the Economic Community of West African States, Niger's President Mamadou Tandja, said at the start of the summit.

Tandja urged the international community and African organizations "not to give way to weariness" about Ivory Coast, where an international working group last week reported a "total impasse" in implementing a UN Security Council resolution aimed at having elections held this year.

Gbagbo's government has controlled the south of the one-time economic hub of west Africa, which is still the world's leading cocoa producer, while the rebel New Forces established their rule over the north and parts of the west after the foiled coup bid in September 2002.

The working group, jointly run by the UN Operation in Ivory Coast and the African Union, meets every month to assess progress in reuniting the country across ceasefire lines monitored by UN and French troops.

On January 12, it reported a "total impasse principally due to the refusal by some Ivorian parties to accept and implement" the UN resolution of November 1 and threw the problem back at ECOWAS and the African Union, urging them to turn up the heat on rival political forces in Ivory Coast.

At Friday's meeting in Ouagadougou, the 15-nation regional economic group considered recommendations to the pan-African organisation based in Addis Ababa, which in turn is scheduled to discuss Ivory Coast on January 29 and 30, and make recommendations to the United Nations by February 1.

The UN Security Council has twice in two years accepted a postponement of elections, but last November it resolved to strip Gbagbo of some of his powers and strengthen the hand of Charles Konan Banny, a former international banker turned prime minister in charge of a transitional government. Banny said after the meeting: "We have had renewed support from ECOWAS for application of the programme to get out of the crisis." Compaore said after his election: "Our states must absolutely consolidate peace and stability especially in backing Ivory Coast in the resumption of the dialogue between the parties that signed the different accords with a view to applying resolution 1721 for the organizing of transparent elections in 2007."

Concerning Guinea, the 11 presidents asked the new ECOWAS chief to sent a delegation there and "use dialogue and non violent means to find a solution to the crisis," the final communique said.