Secretary-General Kofi Annan has sent Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo a $3.6 million bill for UN property and equipment damaged or lost during January riots, the United Nations said today.
"The secretary-general wrote to President Gbagbo expressing his dismay at the fact that the Ivorian authorities had not protected, as they should have, the UN premises during the disturbances in January," UN chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.
Mr Annan, in a letter seen by Reuters news agency, told the Ivorian head of state that the Abidjan headquarters of the UN peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast and a military base and humanitarian agency offices in the western town of Guiglo were among the most seriously damaged in the four days of rioting.
"These events have also had a negative impact on the peace process," Mr Annan wrote, asking Gbagbo to make a public statement supporting the UN mission and its mandate to help implement a long-delayed peace agreement ending a 2002 civil war
The conflict, launched by rebel fighters seeking to oust Gbagbo, ended up splitting the world's biggest cocoa producer into a government-held south and a rebel north.
The UN mission in the volatile West African nation of about 17 million people includes 7,000 troops who work with 4,000 French peacekeepers in maintaining a fragile 2003 cease-fire, enforcing a UN arms embargo and keeping the rebel and government forces apart.
The riots swept across the government-controlled south as well as the western coca-growing region around Guiglo, a tinderbox of ethnic tension and land disputes where scores of people were shot, hacked or burned to death last year.
The disorder, which appeared aimed at pressuring international personnel to flee the country, was sparked by foreign mediators' recommendation that the national parliament, controlled by Gbagbo loyalists, be dissolved until an election could be held. The parliament's mandate expired last October.
The UN Security Council this week imposed sanctions on two leaders of a pro-Gbagbo youth movement that helped drive the riots as well as on a rebel commander, accusing all three of blocking the peace process.
Hit with travel and asset freezes were Young Patriots leaders Charles Ble Goude and Eugene Djue and Fofie Kouakou of the New Forces rebel group.