Africa-ADB-ICoast
   African Development Bank denies losses during I Coast upheaval

   ABIDJAN, June 5 (AFP) - An official in the African Development Bank (ADB)

denied Tuesday that the institution had made losses of a quarter of a
million
dollars a day in the wake of a coup in Ivory Coast in December 1999.
   During an ADB conference last week in Valencia, Spain, an ADB official
estimated that disruptions in operations by the bank, which has significant
holdings and liquidity, had triggered daily losses in the order of 250,000
dollars (293,000 euros).
   "This figure of 250,000 dollars loss per day is a theoretical estimate
based on loss in earnings we might have incurred had our operations in our
trading hall been interrupted for any reason," ADB communications
representative Kemal Saiki said Tuesday.
   "However, we never closed the trading hall," he stressed.
   The Moroccan president of the Abidjan-based ADB, Omar Kabbaj, said in
Valencia on May 30 that for two weeks after the military coup on December
24,
1999, there were attacks on the bank's staff and offices.
   The west African country now has an elected head of state again, but has
remained unstable.
   The ADB had last week been holding its first conference off the African
continent since it began operating in 1966. It counts 53 African members and

24 non-African nations.
   Kabbaj had said in Valencia that the bank was considering three
"emergency
sites" to relocate its headquarters if the security situation in Ivory Coast

deteriorated.
   Kabbaj added: "We hope that will never happen."
   An ADB official said the three countries under consideration for the
bank's
headquarters were Tunisia, Egypt and Ethiopia.
   "On account of precautionary measures taken by the ADB to ensure the
smooth
flow of our business, our trading hall has seen no interruption or
suspension
of its activities in the past two years," Saiki said.
   "The bank has thus sustained no losses."
   Ivory Coast has been gripped by political and military instability for
two
years, in part fuelled by attempts by successive governments to prevent a
main
opposition leader, Alassane Ouattara, from running for office.
   Authorities accuse Ouattara, a former deputy director of the
International
Monetary Fund, of being a national of Burkina Faso and therefore not
eligible
to stand in elections.
   jhd/jlr/nb

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