Three West
African presidents urged Burkina Faso on Wednesday to appoint a transitional
government to guide the country to elections next year following the people's
overthrow of longtime ruler Blaise Compaore last week.
Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama led the
delegation from the West African bloc ECOWAS to help Burkina Faso plot a path
to a civilian-led transition after the military named a senior army officer as
head of state on Saturday.
Mahama, the current
ECOWAS chairman, held talks with Lieutenant Colonel Isaac Zida, opposition
politicians, Compaore's supporters, religious leaders and civil society groups.
There was a general consensus in favour of a civilian-led interim government,
he said.
"There were
going to be elections next year. We believe that we should just work with that
election date, which is next November," he said. "This means there
will be a transitional government for one year and a new president will be
elected."
Nigerian President
Goodluck Jonathan and Senegalese leader Macky Sall, part of the ECOWAS
delegation, agreed with the timetable, Mahama said.
Delegates from the
meetings with Mahama said that all the separate groups had been asked to select
three candidates for the interim presidency, which would be discussed in a
plenary meeting later on Wednesday.
Mahama said the
presidents had recommended that members of the interim authority should not be
permitted to stand in the elections next year.
WARNED AGAINST
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Hundreds of
thousands of demonstrators took to the streets last Thursday when Compaore
tried to force through parliament a constitutional reform to allow him to seek
reelection next year.
He resigned the
next day as the sometimes violent protests continued and was forced to flee to
neighbouring Ivory Coast with the help of France.
Mahama said
regional leaders had attempted to talk Compaore out of the plan to change the
national charter to extend his 27-year rule.
"When our
colleague decided to do what he wanted to do, I can assure you that several of
us spoke with him and advised that it was not a proper thing to do," he
said.
The military
stepped in following Compaore's departure, dissolving the National Assembly and
imposing a curfew. It then appointed Zida, deputy commander of the presidential
guard, as provisional head of state on Saturday. He announced the suspension of
Burkina Faso's 1991 constitution.
Amid mounting
international pressure for a civilian to take the reins of the transition, Zida
promised on Monday to quickly cede power to a transitional government.
Burkina Faso
has assumed a strategic importance in recent years.
Despite a
chequered past including accusations he backed rebels during the civil wars in
Liberia and Sierra Leone, Compaore had reinvented himself as a regional power
broker and Western ally against Islamist militants.
France has a
special forces unit based there as part of its regional counter-terrorism
operation and also uses it as a base for surveillance drones.
Senior advisors
to Compaore negotiated the release, often for multi-million dollar ransoms, of
numerous Western hostages seized in the region. The country also played a
mediation role in the crises in neighbouring Mali and Ivory Coast.
Burkina Faso is
also emerging as one of Africa's top gold producers.
Zida,
previously considered a close ally of the president, received counter-terrorism
training in the United States in 2012 on recommendation from the U.S. Embassy
in Ouagadougou. He attended a second U.S. military course in Botswana.
His was the
second recent takeover by a U.S.-trained military officer in the region after a
Amadou Sanogo, a captain in the army of neighbouring Mali, overthrew President
Amadou Toumani Toure in 2012.
The coup
allowed al Qaeda-linked Islamists to seize Mali's desert north and raised
questions about whether the U.S. military was doing enough to instil respect
for democratic governance in the foreign officers it trained.
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