Negotiations in the wake of last week’s coup in Sao Tome and Principe broke up on Tuesday as international mediators began studying proposals made by the new military junta.
”We made proposals to the mediators,” junta representative Arlesio Costa said after the morning talks broke up. ”They are studying them and we cannot make them public yet. It’s regarding the dissolution of the government.”
Major Fernando Pereira, who led the coup, said the crisis sparked will be resolved ”by the end of the week”.
He said ousted President Fradique de Menezes would be able to return home from Nigeria, where he has been stranded since the bloodless coup last Wednesday, ”at any time, as soon as the memorandum of agreement has been signed”.
The rebel soldiers who seized power in the small west African archipelago last Wednesday dissolved all government bodies and set up a ”junta of national salvation”, but have not set up any transitional entities.
They told diplomats their bloodless putsch was motivated by rampant corruption in the country of 140 000 people.
The talks between a 30-strong mediation team and army rebels led by Pereira had shown signs of progress after the release late on Sunday of seven ministers and a legal adviser, who had been held since the coup.
The officials were freed after Pereira and the head mediator, Democratic Republic of Congo Foreign Minister Rodolphe Adada, agreed that they would be placed under military guard at their homes — as were three women ministers freed earlier — and barred from trying to ”exert any pressure” on the negotiations.
The morning session was supposed to cover modalities for the return of De Menezes, who was in Nigeria at the time of the coup, as well as conditions for the restoration of constitutional order.
De Menezes welcomed the move but insisted the military rebels return to barracks before he would return home and negotiate with them.
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo met with the ousted leader on Monday in Abuja.
The two mediation groups represent the member states of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries and the Central African Economic and Monetary Community plus Nigeria and the United States, the diplomat said.
The junta representatives, for their part, went to visit ousted Prime Minister Maria das Neves, who is recovering in hospital from a mild heart attack she suffered when soldiers raided her house at the start of the pre-dawn coup. – Sapa-AFP