PRETORIA, Nov 5 (AFP) - The World Bank has adopted a "wait and see" policy on Ivory Coast, bank president James Wolfensohn told reporters in Pretoria Sunday. Wolfensohn, who spent three days in closed-door talks with South African government leaders and economists, was speaking five days after the bank sent a letter to the Ivorian authorities announcing that it would "suspend from midnight Washington time, October 31, 2000 (0500 GMT last Wednesday) the rights of the republic of Ivory Coast to make any supplementary withdrawals concerning institutional development fund projects and the suspension of withdrawal rights for existing projects." "We are waiting and seeing what's going on in the Cote d'Ivoire," Wolfensohn told a press conference. "Our missions are over there to see what we can do to try and continue build the programmes. "We're trying to see how it is that we can be supportive and we are open to talks with them." A total of 171 people died in the political, ethnic and religious violence that flared in the Ivory Coast after last month's presidential elections, the west African country's new government said last Thursday. The elections ended with the flight of strongman General Robert Guei and the installation of challenger Laurent Gbagbo, leader of the Ivorian Popular Front, despite appeals from world leaders for new elections to allow the inclusion of candidates who were unable to take part in the October 22 poll. pbl/hn/nb _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask] if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------