South Africa believes that dwelling on the "inconclusive" elections in Ivory Coast will not help in negotiating a political settlement in that country, International Relations Minister Maite Nkoane-Mashabane said on Thursday.

"I thought it was not our business to drag them backward but to help them forward," Nkoane-Mashabane told a media briefing in Cape Town.

Without directly rescinding South Africa's earlier endorsement of Alassane Ouattara as the winner of the presidential vote that sparked a bitter power struggle with incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, she said: "We have no favourite."

This position was informed by the fact that supporters of both Ouattara and Ggagbo had asked South Africa to negotiate an end to the crisis that has raised fears of renewed civil war in Ivory Coast.

President Jacob Zuma will on Monday lead a five-man African Union (AU) delegation to the Ivory Coast for talks.

"If both Ouattara and Gbagbo's people are now saying, together, they need help to get out of this political crisis, I think it is better that we focus on that one and help them out of this political crisis.

"It was them who said they don't want to discuss elections again, they want to move forward because they realise that there were some discrepancies with the elections.

"So I don't know if, when they are asking us to find a way forward, we should be stagnating and taking them backward."

South Africa endorsed Ouattara's victory and asked Gbagbo to leave power after the United Nations, the European Union and the AU recognised that the former prime minister had won the vote.

Nkoane-Mashabane said the initial information received by the AU gave it cause to endorse the Outtara's victory, but the pan-African body had the "prerogative" to review its decisions at a later date.

The minister said she had in the last 10 days held intensive consultations with supporters of both Gbagbo and Ouattara.

She said "both factions" had agreed that they would accept whatever solution Zuma and the rest of the AU team found to end the deadlock in Ivory Coast.