Ivory Coast's ruling party has expressed its support for President Alassane Ouattara seeking a fourth term in 2025, making it more likely that the 82-year-old will run again.

Ouattara, who was re-elected for a contested third term in 2020, has said he would like to step down, but also suggested he would need old rivals to commit to withdrawing from politics too.

On Monday, top officials of Ouattara's party, the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP), passed a motion expressing their desire to do everything possible to ensure that the RHDP, under Ouattara's leadership, was "the undisputed winner of the next presidential election in 2025".

Three cabinet members who asked to stay anonymous said the party had no viable candidate besides Ouattara, and one who took part in the meeting said it had been called to convince Ouattara to stand.

A second minister said: "We've told him that supporters don't want anyone else but him, and we're aligning ourselves with this choice. He has no choice but to accept and be our candidate in 2025."

And the third added: "It's up to him to make an official statement when he wants to, but he knows that we're already out in the field campaigning for him."

Ouattara has presided over relative stability during his nearly 15 years in power. But dozens of people were killed in clashes that broke out around the 2020 vote, when his predecessors and long-term opponents, Laurent Gbagbo and Henri Konan Bedie, said his bid for a third term was unconstitutional.

Ouattara, who has governed since 2011, said in 2020 that he would not run again. But his preferred successor, prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, died several months later.

Ouattara did stand once more after his candidacy was cleared by the Constitutional Court, but his opponents nevertheless boycotted the election.

He has argued that a new constitution approved in 2016 reset his two-term limit in 2020, although opposition parties disagree.

Clashes between rival supporters before and after the 2020 vote killed 85 people, officials later said.