Annan asks Côte d’Ivoire authorities to reimburse UN for riot damage

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has sent the Government of President Laurent Gbagbo of Côte d’Ivoire a bill for damage to UN offices during political unrest in the West African country last month after a UN-authorized group recommended the effective disbanding of the National Assembly, whose mandate had expired.

Mr. Annan wrote Mr. Gbagbo presenting the UN’s costs and expressing his dismay that the Ivorian authorities had not shouldered their responsibility to protect UN facilities during the four days of disturbances in mid-January, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told journalists at UN Headquarters.

Asked whether Mr. Annan would follow up on the letter, Mr. Dujarric said the United Nations was already following up. Among other things, he said, UN officials had already found some of the equipment that had been taken from their offices in the western town of Guiglo.

During the disturbances and siege, Mr. Annan condemned “the orchestrated violence directed against the United Nations, the population, as well as the inaction of some national authorities in responding to the situation,” noting that disturbances were taking place in Abidjan, Daloa, San Pedro, Guiglo and other parts of the country.

The peacekeeping UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) said firebombs thrown into the UN Police office in San Pedro caused serious damage. Roadblocks throughout Abidjan, the commercial centre of one of the world’s top cocoa producers, prevented some UN personnel from getting to work and ONUCI chief Pierre Schori ordered the evacuation of certain mission employees to Gambia and Senegal.

Mr. Schori told reporters in New York that he slept on a mattress in his Abidjan offices during that period.

Côte d’Ivoire was divided into a Government-ruled south and rebel-held north after the failure of an attempted coup against Mr. Gbagbo in September 2002 triggered a civil war. UNOCI troops and UN-authorized French Licorne forces have been guarding the Zone of Confidence separating the former belligerents.