OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dakar | Monday 8.00pm.
BISSAU, quiet after a week of heavy fighting, braced itself for the first meeting, set for early Tuesday, between President Joao Bernardo Vieira and his rival General Ansumane Mane.
However the venue for the meeting, seen as essential to ending the four-month-old conflict in Guinea-Bissau, remained at issue on Monday, diplomats here said.
Initially, it was to have been held at 10:00am near a large baobab tree on the front line in the north of Bissau, the capital, not far from the Bra military camp where the army rebellion broke out on June 7 after Vieira sacked Mane as his army chief of staff.
But Vieira considered the site to be too exposed and suggested another location, also near the front line in Bissau’s embassy district, but this was rejected by Mane.
Fears were growing that the issue over the venue might delay the talks, which were to have been followed by a meeting between military representatives from the two sides. The encounter between the two former comrades-in-arms, now arch-rivals, is to be attended by two advisers for each.
The Portuguese, French and Swedish ambassadors — who helped bring about a ceasefire in effect since Friday — and the Bissau bishop, who has already made several mediation bids, were to stand by if needed to facilitate the talks.
Mane has said he does not seek power but just wants his name cleared of charges of gun-running to Senegalese separatists. He has previously charged that a parliamentary report into the affair suppressed by Vieira implicates the president.
Mane’s backers also no longer consider the withdrawal of foreign troops a precondition to talks. Some 2000 Senegalese soldiers and a smaller contingent of troops from Guinea intervened in Guinea-Bissau soon after the revolt broke out. — AFP
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