Mediators from the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) left the Comoro Islands at the weekend after having failed to convince the military leaders in the capital Moroni to hand power back to a civilian government or bring an end to the separatist crisis on the island of Anjouan. Special OAU envoy, Francisco Caetano Madeira of Mozambique said the five-member OAU team had “carried out good work on the issue of seeking a solution to the institutional crisis”. According to media reports from Moroni, the mediators spoke to military forces, separatists and opposition leaders. The OAU team, according to the reports, also managed to bring together the leader of the breakaway island of Anjouan, Lieutenant-Colonel Said Abeid Abderamane, and the military junta’s Colonel Azali Assoumani. “We told them (the leadership of Anjouan) that they could have any kind of autonomy they wanted so long as they agreed to remain part of the Comoro Islands,” Madeira said. Meanwhile, reports from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said on Monday that the OAU was considering using military pressure to reintegrate Anjouan in to the Indian Ocean archipelago. The international community does not recognise the military government in Moroni or the separatist government on Anjouan. A decision on further sanctions against is expected to be taken when OAU ministers meet in the Togolese capital Lome later this week. The island of Anjouan declared its independence from the Comoros in August 1997. The military seized power in the Comoros in April 1990.
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