Toppled president negotiating with coup leaders

Sao Tome and Principe's ousted President Fradique de Menezes, who soldiers toppled from power in the potentially oil-rich West African island nation on Wednesday, was trying to negotiate with the coup leaders to peacefully renounce their action, an official said. "The president is trying to reach a peaceful resolution of the crisis," presidential spokesman Guillerme Neto, told in IRIN on Thursday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, where Menezes was visiting when the pre-dawn coup took place. Neto did not give details but news agencies said Nigeria would send an envoy to meet the coup leaders. The African Union President who is also Mozambiquan head of state, Joachim Chissano, has condemned the coup as did the US government, the UN secretary-General Kofi Annan and several world leaders. "The African Union will not accept the coup and will seek a restoration of the constitutional government to power through peaceful means," Chissano said on Thursday at the Sullivan Summit leadership conference attended by several African and African-American leaders. De Menezes on Wednesday appealed to "all democrats, world leaders and African leaders" to help restore democratic order in the country. He was quoted by the BBC as saying the coup was about oil. The island, which gained independence from Portugal in 1975, is one of several poor African countries on the verge of an oil boom. It signed an agreement with Nigeria in 2001 to share the revenue from any oil found in their shared offshore waters. Major Fernando Pereira, the head of the island's military training school who seized power and arrested leaders of the country's elected government in the West African nation, 240 km west of Gabon, urged his countrymen to return to work. Pereira, who declared himself head of a National Salvation Front, on Wednesday announced that he would establish a Council of State to organise elections and restore constitutional order in the country. He however neither set the date for the polls nor named the members of the Council. Justifying the coup, Pereira said poverty and bad governance had become widespread in Sao Tome and Principe, leading to a political crisis. He announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew and dissolved all branches of the country's administration, international news agencies reported. The coup leaders promised to release by Thursday all cabinet members and senior government officials who they detained. Life in the island appeared to return to normal with businesses and shops reopening, and traffic moving freely. Wednesday's coup was the second in Sao Tome's 27-history as an independent nation. The country's small army, which numbers less than 1,000 men, seized power briefly in 1995, but returned to barracks after Angola intervened to negotiate a settlement. The country of 170,000 people has been a functioning democracy since the end of one-party rule in 1990. Menezes, a wealthy cocoa exporter, was elected president with 65 percent of the vote in September 2000.