Authorities in Ivory Coast on Wednesday issued an international arrest warrant against a witness in a French inquiry into the disappearance of a Canadian journalist, a lawyer said.

Reporter Guy-Andre Kieffer, 59, who also has French citizenship, disappeared in Ivory Coast in 2004 while researching a story on corruption in the west African state`s cocoa industry.

He has never been found, but French investigators believe he was abducted and murdered on the orders of powerful business interests.

The arrest warrant was issued on October 17 against Berte Seydou, an Ivory Coast national living in France. He is French judge Patrick Ramael`s principal witness, said lawyer Rodrigue Ange Dadje, who is representing Simone Gbagbo, wife of the Ivory Coast president, Laurent Gbagbo.

`Berte Seydou has made untrue declarations as much to the press as to Judge Ramael,` said the lawyer, explaining that Simone Gbagbo had lodged a defamation complaint on July 15 against the witness for implicating her in the disappearance of the journalist.

The arrest warrant `was transmitted by the prosecutor to the French authorities,` he told journalists.

Simone Gbagbo in July ignored a summons to be questioned in Paris.

French investigators believe Kieffer was abducted in the parking lot of an Abdijan supermarket where he was due to meet Michel Legre, Simone Gbagbo`s brother-in-law.

Investigators say they do not suspect the presidential couple are directly involved in the case but are focusing on other officials in Gbagbo`s regime, especially those linked to the powerful cocoa industry.