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IRIN-WA Update 463 of events in West Africa (Thursday 13 May)
GUINEA BISSAU: Tightening up on security
Guinea Bissau has declared its borders closed in a bid to restore security in the nation, news organisations reported Military Junta leader Ansumane Mane as announcing in a radio broadcast.
Mane said "many armed troops" loyal to the toppled president, Joao Bernardo Vieira, were still at large, according to AFP. A police official in Bissau told AFP that these soldiers "made off with many cars and are trying to cross into neighbouring countries". He said civilians feared the armed men, especially the presidential militia, known locally as the "aguentas", who were recruited from Vieira's Pepel ethnic group.
With the border closed, humanitarian aid cannot reach Guinea Bissau by land, although the World Food Programme told IRIN this week it had resumed airlifts. Other humanitarian sources told IRIN on Thursday that trucks with seeds, tools and fertilizers were unable to reach Guinea Bissau. The items are for distribution by the end of May to coincide with the early June planting season.
Portugal will guarantee Vieira's asylum
Portuguese Foreign Minister Antonio Guterres has said Lisbon will not be pressured into handing over Vieira to Guinea Bissau's new rulers for trial against his will.
"If he wants to be tried, of course, that is his right," Guterres told Portuguese radio, RDP Antena 1. However, he said, Portugal will continue to protect Vieira so long as he remains in the Portuguese Embassy, where he took refuge following Friday's overthrow and was granted asylum by Lisbon. "The asylum is guaranteed," Guterres said.
Portuguese Foreign Ministry officials in Lisbon told IRIN that the government was in contact with the new authorities in Bissau and that many possible ways out of the impasse were under discussion.
The Military Junta wants Vieira tried, AFP reported
on Thursday, despite seeming differences with other
local political forces on this issue.
The Junta has called on the judiciary to prepare the
trial "with the requisite diligence and openness",
while guaranteeing Vieira's rights under the law. Officials
from the Organisation of African Unity, the United
Nations and Amnesty International would be allowed
to observe the trial, AFP said.
UN Security Council appeals for Vieira's security
The UN Security Council on Wednesday appealed to the Guinea Bissau leaders to guarantee Vieira's security, Council President Denis Danque Rewaka of Gabon said in a statement. It also called on all officials of Guinea Bissau to cooperate with the head of the UN Peace-building Support Office in the country, Samuel Nana-Kinkam.
The Council expressed its "deep regret" that the 16-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and its Ceasefire Monitoring Group, ECOMOG, "had been prevented from conducting the peace restoration mission which had been entrusted to them under the Abuja and Lome Agreements".
SENEGAL: Portugal says it has had no contact with rebels
Lisbon has had "no contact" with Senegalese separatist rebels, nor have they informed it of their reported desire for Portuguese mediation in the Casamance crisis, an official of Portugal's Foreign Ministry told IRIN on Thursday.
"There has been no contact," the official said in response to a report on Wednesday by the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, which said rebels of the Mouvement de forces democratique de la Casamance (MFDC) wanted Lisbon to mediate and end 17 years of war in the area.
Lusa had quoted the MFDC's secretary-general, Mamadou Sane -who is also its overseas spokesman- as saying Portuguese foreign minister "Jaime Gama could play a crucial role in the search for a solution".
Casamance's rebellion has recently been closely linked to events in Guinea Bissau, where a furore about arms shipments by some Guinea Bissau authorities to the MFDC resulted in the overthrow of President Joao Bernardo Vieira.
Sane told Lusa that the conflict dated to a convention signed in 1886 when Portugal, the former colonial power in Guinea Bissau, ceded Casamance to then French colony of Senegal.
SIERRA LEONE: RUF says it wants partnership with civil society
The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) wants to play an
"integral role in a new transitional government
which would be a partnership of civil society and the
people", its legal advisor, Omrie Golley, told
IRIN on Thursday.
Golley was referring to an RUF demand for the establishment
of a four-year transitional government, one of the
conditions outlined in a report the rebels presented
on Tuesday to Togo's President Gnassingbe Eyadema,
who is currently leading regional mediation efforts
to end the conflict.
"A new political socio-economic landscape has to be grafted," Golley said, "we need to create a breathing space for democracy to work." He said the RUF "did not want to powershare" in the proposed transitional government but did want a partnership with the people.
[See separate item issued earlier today by IRIN West
Africa]
LIBERIA: UN, ECOWAS try to decide fate of surrendered
weapons
The UN and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are examining how to dispose of large numbers of weapons left over from Liberia's seven-year civil war, a UN official told IRIN on Thursday.
The UN Secretary General's Special Representative, Felix Downes-Thomas, said two options were under consideration for scrapping surrendered arms and ammunition stored in containers at the ECOMOG base near Monrovia's central port.
One option which is being considered, Downes-Thomas
said, would be to destroy all of the weapons. The other,
put forward by the Liberian government, would be to
destroy all unserviceable weapons while serviceable
arms would be "the subject of discussion between
the government and the UN".
According to the BBC, tens of thousands of weapons and
millions of rounds of ammunition were handed over to
ECOMOG by the former rebel groups and the national
armed forces during a disarmament exercise in early
1997.
WESTERN SAHARA: Moroccans, Polisario agree on referendum
Security Council members welcomed on Wednesday the formal acceptance by Morocco and the POLISARIO Front of a UN-brokered package of measures that would allow preparations for a referendum on Western Sahara to go forward, the United Nations reported.
The Council's reaction came after Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Bernard Miyet, briefed it on the latest developments on Western Sahara. UN News quoted Miyet as telling the Council now that both parties had agreed to the measures, the process of identifying eligible voters could resume on 15 June. Appeals, he said, could start in July.
UN News also reported that, after the briefing, Security Council President Denis Dangue Rewaka said in a press statement that members of the Council called on the parties to cooperate fully with the UN Mission for the Referendum on Western Sahara (MINURSO).
MINURSO was established under the Settlement Plan of August 1988 to monitor a ceasefire and identify and register qualified voters for a referendum to decide whether the former Spanish colony would gain full independence or become a part of Morocco.
Abidjan, 13 May 1999, 17:12 GMT
[ENDS]
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 17:18:55 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.ocha.unon.org> Subject: WEST AFRICA: IRIN Update 463 for 13 May [19990514]
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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