Sao Tome: Ministers freed
2003-07-21 11:37
Sao Tome - Sao Tome's military junta and international mediators prepared to resume talks early on Monday after seven ministers and a legal adviser detained since a coup last week were allowed to return home.
The release of the eight by the junta which took power on Wednesday in Sao Tome and Principe, an impoverished archipelago in west Africa's Gulf of Guinea, was just the first stage in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis.
The junta and about 30 members of the mediation mission from several Portuguese-speaking and African countries were to resume their negotiations at the United Nations mission here on Monday.
After eight hours of talks on Sunday, junta chief Major Fernando Pereira and the head mediator, Congolese Foreign Minister Rodolphe Adada, signed a six-point memorandum before the eight detainees were taken by their families from military headquarters here.
As was the case for women ministers freed previously, these figures would be placed under military surveillance at their homes, the memorandum said, and could not "exert any pressure" on the negotiations.
Just after the signing ceremony the mediators and military commission went with journalists to greet the ministers, visibly tired after spending four days in the camp where their families had brought them food and clothing daily.
The release was "an important gesture" to "open a window for the resolution of the crisis in Sao Tome and Principe", Pereira declared, adding that "all the military" were "content and satisfied".
"We count on the aid of these detained persons to be able to get out of this crisis," he added.
Calling the freeing of the prisoners "a happy moment in this sad crisis," Adada said it was "a very important gesture in the eyes of the international community that would enable greater advances to be made in resolving the crisis."
All conditions had thus been met for the mediators to study the demands of the coup leaders.
The mediators are seeking a return to legality in Sao Tome, where the army rebels took over the government while President Fradique de Menezes was in Nigeria.
The talks took place under the auspices of the African Union, which has expressed its determination to end military takeovers and civil wars in Africa.
Eight countries are officially involved in the mediation - Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Congo, Gabon, Mozambique, Nigeria and Portugal. The US ambassador to Gabon, Kenneth Moorefield, who was in Sao Tome when the coup occurred, also joined the talks on Sunday, but declined to clarify the role of the United States.
The rebel delegation included seven military and three members of the Christian Democratic Front (FDC), which is not represented in parliament.
Although not a member of the army, the head of the FDC, Arlesio Costa, a former mercenary in South Africa, attended the talks wearing military fatigues. Political sources have said Costa was the real coup leader.
Many of Sao Tome's residents voiced hope that the coup would result in an improvement in their quality of life in a country of only 140 000 people, where the average annual income is about $280.
The archipelago, off the west coast of Africa, is burdened by one of the highest debt-per-capita ratios in the world and is heavily dependent on foreign aid.
But it is banking on future revenues from offshore oil reserves, which some estimates place at around four billion barrels, even though oil extraction could not begin before 2005 at the earliest.