Prime Minister quits after two months during visit to Paris

Guinea's Prime Minister, Francois Fall, has resigned and gone into exile after just two months in the job, protesting that President Lansana Conte was blocking his attempts at political and economic reform. Fall, a respected former foreign minister and Guinean representative at the United Nations, submitted his resignation last Thursday while attending a meeting of the River Niger Basin Authority in Paris. Political sources in Conakry said he had taken the precaution of taking his family out of the country before announcing his departure. Fall's letter of resignation was subsequently published on the Canada-based Guinean news website Boubah.com and the French current affairs weekly Jeune Afrique Intelligent. His decision to quit was widely reported by independent newspapers in Conakry, but five days later, it was still being ignored by state-run radio and television. Government officials refused to comment on Fall's almost unprecedented decision to resign of his own accord in a country where ministers normally only leave office when they are fired by the president. It was not clear on Monday whether or not any other members of Fall's team would also quit, but political sources said government changes might well be announced following the regular weekly cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Fall was appointed prime minister on 23 February to lead a new government with a reforming face following Conte's re-election for a further seven-year term in last December's presidential election. This was boycotted by all of Guinea's mainstream opposition parties. They subsequently claimed that the poll - which gave Conte 95 percent of the vote - was riddled with fraud. Fall said in his letter of resignation that he had quit because "anachronistic practices" and the "continuing lack of dialogue" between members of the government, between the government and the opposition and between the government and international donors, had made his task impossible. He particularly complained that his attempts to reform the economy, renegotiate Guinea's external debt, launch a new dialogue with the European Union and clean up the justice system had been blocked. The EU has promised to release 240 million euros ($US280 million) of aid witheld from Guinea if only the government will agree to certain political and economic reforms to improve the quality of governance in this poor and notoriously corrupt country. Fall told Radio France Internationale (RFI) that he was particularly frustrated by the government's harassment of Sidya Toure, a former prime minister, who is now a major opposition figure. Toure was repeatedly questioned by the security services last month about an alleged coup plot against Conte, who has ruled Guinea with an iron hand since 1984. He has now been charged with plotting against the president and has banned from leaving Conakry. "I was completely unable to carry out properly the mission entrusted to me. The president vetoes everything. So I decided to quit," Fall told Jeune Afrique Intelligent. The former prime minister told RFI that he announced his resignation from the safety of France because his life would have been in danger had he unveiled the move while he was still at home. "If I had done so in Conakry my security would have been in danger," he said. Fall suggested to Jeune Afrique that Toure, who managed the economy with some success betwen 1996 and 1999, would be a good man to head a new elected government in Guinea, should the army take power and depose the ailing 70-year-old president with the aim of creating a genuine democracy for the first time in the former French colony. Diplomats say Conte suffers from diabetes and heart disease and is now barely able to walk. State television showed pictures of the president casting his vote while sitting in the front seat of his car during last December's election.