The junta that seized power in Sao Tome and Principe will likely sign an agreement on Wednesday on restoring constitutional order to the small west African island state, international mediators said.
”The negotiation is going quite fine. We’re about to reach an agreement and we’re getting the secretary to prepare the document for everybody to look at it,” Nigerian ambassador to Sao Tome Saidu Pindar said after a third day of talks turned into an all-night marathon.
”Maybe we can close this matter.”
A smiling Democratic Republic of Congo Foreign Minister Rodolphe Adada, who is leading the international mediation, said the talks would resume in the afternoon after the participants have a rest.
The talks have centred on the return of ousted President Fradique de Menezes, currently in Gabon on the African mainland, and on the return to constitutional rule to the impoverished Gulf of Guinea archipelago.
But a second element concerns the status of 16 of the putschists who once belonged to one of the most feared units that fought in apartheid-era South Africa, known as the Buffalo Battalion.
They were among 70 men who went off to South Africa after mounting a failed bid to seize power in Sao Tome in 1988, and are seeking rehabilitation. They reportedly also want the repatriation of the bodies of their comrades killed while fighting with the battalion.
A team of eight South African mediators arrived in Sao Tome on Tuesday to contribute to discussions of the Buffalo Battalion issue on the sidelines of the negotiations, a diplomat said.
One diplomat said De Menezes, who was visiting Nigeria when the coup was launched a week ago, would return to the country ”very soon”.
Coup leader Major Fernando Pereira had said on Tuesday that De Menezes’s hold on power was ”not in question” and the crisis in the small west African island state would be resolved by the weekend.
He said De Menezes would be able to return ”at any time, as soon as the memorandum of agreement has been signed”.
Pereira said: ”It’s not the president who is in question, nor the prime minister, or anyone. It is a whole country, a nation that is in question.”
Pereira, known by the nickname Cobo, said last week that the coup was ”an SOS to the international community” over rampant corruption on the tiny islands that are home to 140 000 people.
He repeated that stance on Tuesday, insisting that the coup had been a response to gruelling living conditions in Sao Tome. – Sapa-AFP