Presidential elections set for November despite coup attempt

Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya has confirmed plans to go ahead with presidential elections in November after narrowly surviving a coup attempt that led to two days of heavy fighting in the capital Nouakchott. The Interior Ministry said on Wednesday the presidential election would go ahead as planned on November 7 and a three-month exercise to update the voters' register would start on Sunday. Ould Taya, who came to power in a 1984 coup, is widely expected to seek a further six-year term as the leader of this desert nation of less than three million inhabitants. He made Mauritania a multi-party Islamic state in 1991, but the opposition has consistently complained of government harassment. Sketchy details have begun emerging of casualties in last Sunday's coup attempt, during which the insurgents bombarded and briefly occupied the presidential palace. Although the Mauritanian authorities have remained silent on the matter, Moroccan radio reported that 29 people had died, inclduding five civilians. The Moroccan news agency said 23 Mauritanian soldiers injured in the fighting had been flown to Morocco for treatment. The authorities in Nouakchott have not said who was behind the coup attempt, during which Ould Taya went into hiding and state radio and television went off the air for 24 hours. However, diplomats said a former army colonel, Saleh Ould Hanena, was widely believed to have been a ringleader of the insurgents, whose motivation remains a mystery. The coup attempt followed a month-long government crackdown on opposition parties, Islamic radicals and other government critics. However diplomats said the military uprising may simply have been motivated by tensions between different groups and personalities within the army. The opposition boycotted the last presidential election in 1997 and no challengers have yet emerged to stand against Ould Taya in this year's poll.