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ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Comments by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that President Laurent Gbagbo is expected to win Ivory Coast's election next year have provoked an angry reaction from Ivorian opposition politicians.

Kouchner was quoted by French media on Monday as saying that Gbagbo was in line to win the vote, which is seen as crucial to reuniting a country deeply divided by a 2002-3 civil war.

The polls have been repeatedly delayed since 2005 but are now scheduled for around the beginning of March next year.

"I think the Ivorian head of state, Laurent Gbagbo, is expected to win it," Kouchner was quoted as saying.

In comments published on Wednesday in the state-owned Fraternite Matin, Sanogo Mamadou, secretary to opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara's party, condemned the remarks.

"It's not France who elects the Ivorian president and Bernard Kouchner is not an Ivorian voter," he wrote.

"If he'd said the opposite, the French embassy would have been trashed," he added, referring to the pro-Gbagbo "Young Patriots" who attacked French property and citizens in late 2004 after French peacekeepers destroyed Ivorian war planes.

France's close relationship with various leaders of its former colonies has often caused resentment.

Gbagbo's party, despite having accused France of backing rebels trying to oust him in the past, was more conciliatory.

"That a foreign minister from a country like France says Gbagbo will win ... should help sceptics to realise that he really is going to," said Sokouri Bohui, Gbagbo's party secretary.