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Junta wants ECOMOG to help organise elections

[Liberia] Monrovia is still a patchwork of shelled buildings and potholed roads more than two years after the war ended. 5 October 2005. Claire Soares/IRIN
War scarred Monrovia, where out-going government members are looting their own offices
    MONROVIA
    Military Junta spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Zamora Induta said on Tuesday that the West African Peace Monitoring Group, ECOMOG, will help Guinea Bissau's government prepare general and presidential elections scheduled for 28 November, AFP reported. Neither ECOMOG nor ECOWAS, the regional economic body that deployed the force, could be reached on Tuesday for a comment on Induta's statement. Induta was speaking in Lisbon, where he and other Junta members had talks with Portuguese government officials. ECOMOG has 600 men in Guinea Bissau, where it was deployed to oversee a November 1998 peace accord between the now ousted administration of Joao Bernardo Vieira and the Military Junta. Shortly after the Junta seized power on 7 May, critics questioned the need for the ECOMOG force, comprising troops from Benin, The Gambia, Togo and Niger. In this regard, Benin said it would withdraw its men as soon as possible as they were no longer needed.

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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