ECOWAS delegation expected

A delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was expected on Tuesday in Abidjan for talks with the new ruling Comite National de Salut Public (CNSP), news organisations announced. The visit was decided at a meeting which the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council held on 29 December in Bamako, Mali, to discuss the overthrow on 24 December of the government of President Henri Konan Bedie. The Council, made up of the foreign ministers of 10 countries, “strongly condemned the military coup d’etat in Cote d’Ivoire,” according to its final communiqué. It called on the CNSP to set up a transitional government tasked with organising free and fair elections so as to re-establish constitutional legality and democratic institutions by June 2000. It asked the CNSP to free all political detainees, guarantee their safety, allow humanitarian organisations access to detention centres, and guarantee human rights throughout the country. The meeting also agreed that the delegation, led by the chairman of the Mediation and Security Council and including ECOWAS Executive Secretary Lansana Kouyate, would go to Abidjan to inform the new authorities of the Committee’s decisions. The ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council comprises Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Togo.