Sao Tome: Diplomats plan to mediate

2003-07-18 10:07

Sao Tome - The Community of Portuguese-speaking Nations agreed on Thursday to send a mission to Sao Tome and Principe as part of a bid to mediate between the leaders of a coup in the island nation and the ousted government whose members remain in the hands of the putschists.

As deposed president Fradique de Menezes, stranded in Nigeria, sought to rally international support, a spokesperson for the head of the African Union, Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, said military intervention could be considered to restore the democratically elected government in the oil-rich but impoverished west African archipelago.

But Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, whose country currently heads the Community of Portuguese-speaking Nations (CPLP), said the organization would send a team headed by a minister from Angola and which had de Menezes' backing.

"We would not take any decision that did not take into account the wishes of the constitutional president of Sao Tome," he told reporters at the end of the first day of a two-day CPLP summit in the central Portuguese city of Coimbra.

When asked when the diplomatic mission would head to the island state, Amorim said "as soon as possible".

"If it is possible, the mission could depart as early as tomorrow," he added.

Amorim said Brazil, Cape Verde and Mozambique, which currently heads the 53-nation African Union, as well as Portugal had agreed to take part in the mission.

He added the mission would be coordinated with African organisations like the Community of Central African States.

Angolan Foreign Minister Joao Miranda meanwhile told the Portuguese Lusa news agency Angola's interior minister, Osvaldo Serra Van Dunem, would head the diplomatic mission.

He said the delegation would travel on Friday to Brazzaville where it would coordinate its mission with representatives of the Community of Central African States who are scheduled to meet in the capital of Congo.

Miranda said the delegation would then travel to Sao Tome "as soon as possible".

The CPLP comprises Portugal and its former colonies Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe.

Troops seized control of Sao Tome and Principe, which lies off the west coast of Africa, on Wednesday while de Menezes was in Nigeria to attend a conference.

De Menezes firmly denied rumours that he planned a dramatic return to power backed by Nigerian troops, but said he hoped to win concrete support from the African Union.

"In a situation where a democratically elected government is being ousted, the African Union must begin to think about preventing it, as it has done in other countries," he told the Portuguese radio in an interview from the Nigerian capital Abuja.

Antonio Montonse, spokesperson for the head of the African Union, told Lusa it was likely that a proposal for military intervention would arise in Abuja, but he stressed that a negotiated settlement to the crisis would be preferred.

Sao Tome has been gripped with rumours - immediately denied by Menezes's camp - that the president might return home from Abuja backed by Nigerian troops, to regain power from coup leader Major Fernando Pereira.

Nigeria is west Africa's military powerhouse and has close relations with Sao Tome, particularly regarding offshore oil fields in the Gulf of Guinea, where the neighbours were negotiating a joint exploration zone.

Major Pereira has said he plans to set up a provisional government that will hold free elections. Details of his junta's plans would be made public on Friday, Lusa quoted him as saying late on Thursday.

He said on state radio on Wednesday that the coup was "an SOS to the international community over the difficult socio-economic situation which exists in Sao Tome and Principe".

Meanwhile, he said that three women ministers seen escorted from the military barracks where they had been held since the coup some 36 hours earlier had been allowed to go home "for reasons of hygiene".

Prime Minister Maria das Neves was initially among those detained but she was taken to hospital after suffering a mild heart attack following a gunfight at her home when the putschists came to arrest her.

The day after the power grab in the country of 140 000 the capital Sao Tome was calm, with people going about business as usual and the main market functioning normally. The airport remained closed, however, stranding several groups of tourists on the twin-island state.

Sao Tome and Principe, mired in poverty since independence in 1975, sit atop a potential oil bonanza estimated at four billion barrels of crude. But for now, Sao Tome's average annual income per person is $280 and the country is heavily dependent on foreign aid.

Critics of de Menezes, who has carried out several purges of his government since being elected in 2000, call him impulsive and short-tempered.

Maria das Neves is his fourth prime minister.

- AFX