President called to answer charges

Guinea Bissau's parliament has voted to have President Joao Bernado Vieira answer charges that he had been aware last year of illegal arms shipments to separatists in the troubled neighbouring Senegalese area of Casamance. Sources in the capital, Bissau, told IRIN on Monday, that 74 of the 90 members of parliament present on Friday upheld the conclusions of a parliamentary commission that Vieira should face a supreme court trial on charges that he was aware of the arms smuggling by a number of his aides, most of them army officers, but that he had done "nothing against it". The recommendations were that Vieira and the aides in question stand trial within a month. It was just ahead of a parliamentary debate on arms trafficking in June last year, that Vieira sacked his army chief, General Ansumane Mane, sparking a military rebellion that resulted in six months of fighting. The parliamentary inquiry cleared Mane of involvement in the arms dealing. By late Monday, the sources said, Vieira had not reacted to the parliamentary vote.