EG mourning for Bongo
2009-06-12 18:19
Malabo - Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema on Friday decreed three days of national mourning for the late president Omar Bongo Ondimba of neighbouring Gabon, state radio and television announced.
From Friday until Sunday, "all national flags will fly at half-mast on public buildings and the vessels of the national armed forces and state security services", the decree said.
The death of Bongo, who ruled for 41 years as Africa's longest serving head of state, was announced Monday in Spain, where he had been in a private clinic being treated for cancer, according to medical sources. He was 73.
The broadcast said that Obiang had taken account of the "special relations existing between the Republic of Gabon and the Republic of Equatorial Guinea throughout history, and the special relations between the heads of state".
Nevertheless, relations between the small former Spanish colony, which has seen an oil boom in the past decade, and oil-rich Gabon have been tense because of a border dispute.
Since the 1970s, Libreville and Malabo have claimed Mbanie, Cocotiers and Conga, three small isles in the Gulf of Guinea supposedly rich in oil.
Bongo's body was repatriated on Thursday to lie in state at the presidential palace in Libreville until a state funeral on Tuesday, which many African and other international leaders are expected to attend.
