Efforts intensify to restore Menezes to power

Fradique de Menezes, who was deposed as president of the island nation of Sao Tome and Principe by rebel soldiers, said on Friday diplomatic efforts had intensified to restore him to power. De Menezes who held a closed-door meeting with Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo and Joachim Chissano of Mozambique – the current chairman of the African Union – said the United States and Portugal had joined the diplomatic efforts to end the impasse in his country. "A delegation from Nigeria probably will arrive today in Sao Tome," he told reporters in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. Another delegation comprising central African and Portuguese-speaking countries (CPLP) in the continent will also be involved in negotiating "the conditions to return (Sao Tome) to normal democratic rule", he added. Chissano said several diplomatic channels had already been opened to reach the rebel soldiers who toppled de Menezes on Wednesday while he was attending the 6th Leon Sullivan Summit in Nigeria. "We are in contact with the two parties...we're trying to continue the dialogue," he said. Chissano said talks between the delegations and the rebels would determine when the ousted president could return to office. He did not rule out military intervention when asked if it was being considered, but said it "will depend on the outcome of the dialogue". President Obasanjo had left the meeting earlier without talking to reporters. The CPLP mission, to be headed by Portuguese Interior Minister Gen Osvaldo Van-Dunun, is scheduled to travel to the Gabonese capital, Libreville, to meet representatives of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Portuguese radio reported on Friday. The Portuguese Foreign Minister, Antonio Martins da Cruz, said the mission would depart from the Angolan capital Luanda to Libreville on Saturday, and travel to Sao Tome "as soon as air traffic returns to normality". "We are not sitting still. The Portuguese ambassador to Sao Tome has been meeting the leaders of the military movement and he is trying to pursue his diplomacy discreetly by taking part in the dialogue, building bridges and making calls for a return to constitutional order," Da Cruz said. He added: "I would like to call on the leaders of the military movement to surrender the political prisoners so that we may swiftly restore constitutional order." Major Fernando Pereira, the head of Sao Tome and Principe's military training school, seized power and arrested leaders of the country's elected government. He was backed by a small opposition party in the mountainous and densely forested island, 240 km west of Gabon. Sao Tome and Principe, which gained independence from Portugal in 1975, is one of several poor African countries on the verge of an oil boom. The twin-island state, which has a population of about 170,000 people, signed an agreement with Nigeria in 2001 to split the revenue from any oil found in their shared offshore waters. At a United States briefing on Thursday in Washington DC, spokesman Richard Boucher strongly condemned the coup. He said the US government wanted a peaceful and non-violent resolution of the crisis, including the release of all hostages. The elected government should be allowed to continue to function, he added. "I have to make clear our position is based on the fact that there was a freely elected government that was overthrown by elements of the military. There were arrests of officials of a freely elected government by elements of the military. And we strongly condemn it," he said.