West Africa's political heavyweights meet in Togo on Monday to salvage faltering efforts to end war in Ivory Coast as former colonial ruler France rushes more troops to enforce a fragile cease-fire.Togo's President Gnassingbe Eyadema has been hosting peace talks between Ivory Coast's main rebel faction (MPCI) and the government since the end of October but scant progress has been made and the leaders will now take stock of the negotiations.

A key economic force in Africa and a regional transport hub, Ivory Coast has been split in two since rebels captured the north after a failed coup in September.

MPCI rebels signed a cease-fire a month later but the emergence of two new rebel factions in the west has rocked the truce and forced French troops to fight them to secure an airport a fortnight ago near the town of Man.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Senegal's leader Abdoulaye Wade will join Eyadema in the northern Togolese town of Kara along with the leaders of Ghana and Gabon, an Ivory Coast government delegation and MPCI rebels, officials said.

Liberian President Charles Taylor, whose own revolt with backing from Ivory Coast's then leaders triggered Liberia's 1990s civil war, has been invited to help throw light on the hundreds of Liberian mercenaries who have reportedly flooded across the border to fight with the new rebel factions.

"Liberia is one of the countries affected by the crisis in Ivory Coast," said Toussaint Alain, a spokesman for Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo. "It's perfectly logical that Mr. Taylor should come to this meeting to explain what he knows."

The regional summit comes as France steps up the diplomatic pressure to find a peaceful solution to the three-month crisis which has left hundreds dead and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

France, the former colonial ruler of the world's biggest cocoa grower, is keen to host a peace summit in Paris to end the crisis as soon as possible and has said it would invite many of the same people due to meet in Togo on Monday.

"With diplomatic initiatives multiplying it would be good to carry out a proper evaluation of the Lome process," Alain said. "The meeting will be an assessment, to see if it can work."

France rushed fresh Foreign Legion paratroopers into Ivory Coast on Sunday with orders to shoot anyone violating the truce as the French mission shifts from monitoring to enforcement.

The arrival of the crack troops, part of France's biggest intervention force in Africa since the 1980s, angered rebels who accuse Paris of sending an occupying army to its former colony.

More French troops and equipment were due to arrive over the coming days by sea and air, in a deployment that has enraged rebels and their sympathizers.

PHOTO CAPTION

French soldiers unload equipment at the Felix Houphouet Boigny International airport in Abijan December 15, 2002. France rushed fresh Foreign Legion paratroopers into the war-torn Ivory Coast with orders to shoot anyone violating the country's fragile cease-fire as the French mission shifts from monitoring to enforcement. T (Luc Gnago/Reuters)