Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara called on Thursday for Ivorians living abroad to return home and help the country recover from a bitterly contested election that turned violent.

"I ask you to get to work and above all to return in mass to the country," Ouattara told a gathering of Ivory Coast expatriates in a Paris hotel.

"I ask you that because you have acquired here experience and we have need of your experience," said Ouattara.

"Return to your country and you will see a country in full expansion where there is work for all," he added.

Ouattara formally took over as head of state earlier this month after his supporters ousted former president Laurent Gbagbo, who had refused to accept that his rival had won a November election recognised by the international community.

Nearly 3,000 people died in the months of violence that followed the vote, according to the new government, and tens of thousands fled into neighbouring countries.

Ouattara said ensuring peace and security was a top priority following the bloody struggle to oust Gbagbo.

"It is to a peaceful country that you would return massively, where investors are coming to invest so that Ivory Coast can resume its role as the centre of development in west Africa," said the president.

He told his Ivorian audience that his invitation to the ongoing G8 summit in the French resort town of Deauville was not "accidental."

The international community, he said, "must provide support to Ivory Coast for its development," adding that with help the country "is going to move forward very quickly."

Ivory Coast remains the world's top cocoa producer, but saw its role as a regional economic heavyweight disappear during a decade of division and unrest.

A military coup in 1999 was followed by elections in 2000 widely perceived to have been rigged in which Gbagbo beat Ouattara.

In 2002 Gbagbo managed to stay in his post after an attempted coup but only kept control of the southern half of Ivory Coast while the New Forces (FN) rebel movement took the north.

A peace deal was reached in 2007, but elections were repeatedly postponed.

"I want you to know that before the end of my mandate the Ivory Coast will have retaken its place," he said, recalling that in the 1990s the country had been sub-Saharan Africa's third economy.

"My second ambition is that at the turn of 2020 that Ivory coast is an emerging country," said Ouattara.

The ousted Gbagbo, who is being held in a presidential residence in the north of the country, met his lawyers for the first time on Thursday.

Ouattara says his archrival will face domestic prosecution and has also asked the International Criminal Court to probe whether Gbagbo committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for his conduct after the disputed poll.

One Gbagbo's six lawyers, Habiba Toure, told AFP by phone after the meeting that an ordinary Ivorian court is not capable of trying the former president.

Gbagbo, Toure said, is "not an ordinary suspect."