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By Peter Murphy

ABIDJAN, June 19 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast is seeking an initial $82 million and a maximum of $461 million from oil trader Trafigura to cover depollution and medical costs stemming from a toxic waste dumping case, the presidency said on Tuesday.

Presidential spokesman Gervais Coulibaly said this money would be in addition to a settlement in February in which the Dutch-based trader agreed to pay $198 million to compensate victims of the dumping, in which 16 people died and thousands were made ill by slops unloaded from a Trafigura-chartered ship.

The February settlement obtained the release of two Trafigura executives who had been detained in the West African country accused of violating toxic waste and poisoning laws. They had originally travelled there to help with investigations into the dumping.

In a statement reacting to local media reports quoting the $461 million maximum sought, Trafigura said it did not accept this figure.

"There is an ongoing environmental audit that will help to establish any figures that are owed but it has not yet been concluded. So any figures must be seen as speculative," the company said.

"These are the start of negotiations," Coulibaly told Reuters. He said Interior Minister Desire Tagro would meet Trafigura representatives in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou at the end of this week.

Trafigura, one of the world's biggest oil and commodities traders, has denied any wrongdoing, saying it entrusted the waste to a registered Ivorian company which dumped it in several open-air sites around Ivory Coast's commercial capital Abidjan.

At the height of the scandal last year, Abidan hospitals were overwhelmed as thousands sought treatment for vomiting, nausea, diarrhoea and breathing difficulties after exposure to noxious fumes emitted by the poisonous slops.

RESIDUES IN GROUND

Trafigura was pilloried by environmental groups, which described the case as an example of the rich developed world dumping its dangerous and unwanted waste on the world's poorest continent.

Coulibaly said Ivory Coast's technical development consultancy BNETD and Anti-Pollution Centre estimated that at least an initial 40 billion CFA francs ($81.88 million) would be needed over the next five years to cover the clean-up of the waste and to monitor and care for remaining victims. There could still be further costs after that.

"There are still some residues and we need to go deeper into the ground. In some places it has been announced that it could reach the (underground) water table," he said.

Coulibaly said Trafigura would be offered the option of making a one-off payment of 225 billion CFA ($460.6 million) which would release it from further environmental and medical liability before the Ivorian government.

Most of the waste itself has already been collected by French hazardous waste specialists Tredi International and shipped to France for processing.

A British court agreed earlier this year to hear a class action case brought against Trafigura by law firm Leigh Day & Co, which is seeking cash compensation for what it estimates are around 4,000-5,000 people who were hurt by the waste.

The firm says the case will proceed until victims are paid the full value of their compensation claims for ill health they suffered from exposure to fumes.

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