The National Islamic Council called for the meeting saying their members had suffered the most in violence last week at the hands of both the country's paramilitary police and supporters of Mr Gbagbo's party.

Clashes erupted soon after military ruler General Robert Guei was forced out of office after attempting to declare himself the winner of controversial presidential elections.

A least 150 people died in the violence - most of them members of former prime minister Alassane Ouattara's party which boycotted the elections and has been calling for fresh polls.

The Ivorian Movement for Human Rights quoted a police source as saying nearly 500 people were killed and about 1,000 seriously hurt in the clashes.

Community relations

The BBC's Abidjan correspondent, Elizabeth Blunt says that life in the commercial capital now appears to be back to normal, but the scars of last week's events still run deep.

Leaders of the Muslim community are expected to tell President Gbagbo that relations between the different communities in this once tolerant country have been seriously damaged.

This, the leaders say, has given them the impression that some citizens are now being regarded as less Ivorean than others.

The council's vice-president, Alhaji Diguiba Cissé, said, "the main problem to tackle during this meeting will be to know that our security is guaranteed in the new Ivory Coast of the second republic."

"There is a very deep feeling of exclusion of our community," he said.

Reports say most of those who were hunted down and killed were Muslims, with their family origins in northern Ivory Coast or neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso.