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ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's electoral commission (CEI) has apologised for errors made in drawing up a voter list, saying thousands of names disputed by President Laurent Gbagbo were never intended to be on it.

The row has raised fears that Ivory Coast's presidential poll, postponed several times since 2005, will miss another deadline, prolonging the instability and political limbo that has been the norm since a 2002-3 war cut the country in two.

"(There has been) an evident malfunction in some services carried out by the independent electoral commission," CEI chief Robert Mambe said in a statement late on Thursday.

Separately the U.N. special envoy to Ivory Coast estimated it would take six weeks to prepare polls from the time a final voter list was ready as planned by February: two weeks to print identity and voter cards, two weeks to distribute them to 10,000 poll sites, and two weeks of campaigning.

"This timetable would lead us to spring 2010," Young-jin Choi told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday.

Gbagbo has accused the opposition-dominated commission of adding 429,000 names to the final voter register which had not been properly vetted to check their identity. The names came from a leaked CD in which they appeared to have been so added.

Quick and peaceful polls are seen as vital if Ivory Coast is to regain its position as West Africa's economic hub. The Finance Ministry forecasts economic growth at 4 percent in 2010 and 5 percent the following year, but analysts say such rosy projections hinge on polls ending the stalemate.

Urgently needed reforms to the cocoa sector, which supplies 40 percent of global demand, also await the end of the vote.

Six million Ivorians registered for the election, but a million of those were contested, largely on nationality grounds. The period for contesting the list ended two weeks ago and the commission aims to have the final list out by end-January.