A lawyer representing victims of toxic waste dumped illegally in Ivory Coast said on Monday he was demanding damages from Dutch authorities for the disaster, which killed 10 people and made thousands ill. "We asked the Dutch government and the city of Amsterdam to recognise responsibility for the injuries and casualties and pay damages to those people and families," Dutch lawyer Bob van der Goen told Reuters.

He said he represented 1,075 victims from Ivory Coast. Last July the tanker Probo Koala tried to dispose of hundreds of tonnes of chemical slops in Amsterdam but the ship's agent did not accept the clean-up costs. The vessel left Amsterdam and, after making stops, ended up in Ivory Coast. In August, toxic waste was found at open-air sites around Abidjan, causing vomiting, diarrhoea, nosebleeds and nausea among residents. The incident forced the war-divided country's cabinet to resign.

"If the authorities do not take responsibility, we will go to court... we could claim several tens of millions of euros," Van der Goen said. The city of Amsterdam says it is not responsible for what happened in Ivory Coast, and that its lawyers were working on a reply to Van der Goen's request, according to a city spokeswoman.

"A committee concluded that a number of things did not go well (in Amsterdam's port), but it also said that it was not possible to see a one-to-one relationship with what happened in Ivory Coast," the spokeswoman said. Dutch government authorities were not immediately available for comment. Trafigura Beheer, a Dutch-based commodities trading firm which chartered the ship, has denied any wrongdoing, saying the slops were residue from normal operations. It blames an Ivorian company for not disposing of them properly.

Van der Goen said he was working with British and French lawyers to sue Trafigura in Britain, where a court last week agreed to hear a class action case involving a complaint against the company. A report commissioned by the Ivorian prime minister said in November that port, customs and district officials had been negligent and Trafigura had violated the Basel Convention by shipping toxic substances to a developing country.

(Planet Ark, 06/02/2007)