By Peter Murphy

ABIDJAN, May 23 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's President Laurent Gbagbo has asked the United Nations to remove its representative in charge of monitoring long-overdue elections in the war-divided country, accusing him of meddling.

Addressing African ambassadors this week, Gbagbo said Gerard Stoudmann and the former head of a 7,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission, Pierre Schori, had acted "as if they had power to govern Ivory Coast."

"I wrote a letter to the Secretary General of the U.N. to tell him ... 'You must come and take them away because, there aren't two or three Presidents. There's only one'," Gbagbo said, in a transcript of the speech posted on the presidency Website.

Stoudmann's office in Abidjan said he was currently on a mission outside the country but declined to comment on Gbagbo's remarks. Pierre Schori left in February after two years in office, denouncing a lack of urgency in the peace mission.

"What is for sure is that Stoudmann won't return because there's no co-presidency here," Gbagbo told the diplomats on Monday.

Ivory Coast has been divided in two since rebels seized the north of the world's top cocoa grower in a brief 2002-2003 civil war. Its long-deadlocked peace process has made progress since March when Gbagbo and the rebels signed a home-grown peace deal.

Stoudmann was appointed in April 2006 by former Secretary General Kofi Annan to oversee the organisation of presidential and legislative polls which have been put back twice since 2005, and, crucially, to validate the elections as free and fair.

REGULAR CRITICISM

Gbagbo has regularly accused foreign mediators of interference in Ivorian affairs. Hardline pro-Gbagbo youths attacked U.N. bases for four days last year after mediators made recommendations about the parliament.

In a progress report last week, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon acknowledged that Gbagbo had written two letters in March and April asking that the U.N. role in the vote be limited to observation and technical advice.

Ban said that both and opposition leaders and former rebel chief Guillaume Soro, who was named prime minister in March under the peace deal, have strongly supported Stoudmann's role, created as the result of a previous peace deal in 2005.

Ban said that Gbagbo had dropped his objections after meeting with a U.N. assessment mission which visited the former French colony in April.

However, Gbagbo told the ambassadors that he had insisted to the mission that Stoudmann must go.

"I told them that everything was working fine between me and the U.N. but they should take Stoudmann with them if they didn't want me to declare him persona non grata one day," he said.

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