By Peter Murphy

YAMOUSSOUKRO, June 12 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast can still hold a presidential election in early 2008 despite delays in implementing a peace deal between its former government and rebels, Burkina Faso's president said on Tuesday.

Blaise Compaore, who helped broker a March peace agreement between President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro, met top Ivorian politicians to review progress towards disarmament and the long-delayed poll.

"We still have a month and a half, two months delays in our activities and there's no doubt that with each other's efforts, we can try to get make up for that," he told reporters after the meeting in Ivory Coast's political capital Yamoussoukro.

"It therefore appears probable to us that in the first weeks of 2008, these elections can be held for the completion (of the process)," he said, flanked by Gbagbo, Soro and opposition leaders Henri Konan Bedie and Alassane Dramane Ouattara.

Compaore is also head of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and was on his first visit to Ivory Coast since a 2002-2003 civil war in which rebels seized the north and left the world's top cocoa grower split in two.

A string of foreign-brokered accords ran aground amid political bickering and the election has repeatedly been postponed since it was first due in 2005. Under the latest, home-grown peace plan, it is supposed to take place by January.

Soro was named prime minister weeks after the March agreement, a home-grown accord which foresees the dismantling of a U.N.-manned buffer zone between the two sides and the withdrawal of French peacekeepers.

Tuesday's meeting was the first of several the leaders will hold every few months to evaluate progress on the implementation of the peace plan.

They called on Soro to ensure an identification process to draw up a list of nationals eligible to vote -- a sticking point in peace efforts -- was started as soon as possible to pave the way for the poll.

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