Mauritanians flee amid tension

Many Mauritanians residing in Guinea-Bissau have been returning home in recent days, news organisations reported on Monday. PANA quoted ‘Les Plumes’, a Mauritanian newspaper, as reporting that some of the estimated 3,000 Mauritanians in Guinea-Bissau - most of them traders - were leaving the country on the advice of the Mauritanian consulate, which felt it had become unsafe. Humanitarian sources in Bissau say there is tension between the elected government and a section of the former military junta that co-governed the country from May 1999 until President Kumba Yala’s inauguration on 17 February 2000. Earlier this month, the chief of naval staff, Col. Lamine Sanha, refused to accept his dismissal by Yala, fuelling fears that the fragile peace process in the country, which was wracked by civil war in 1998 and early 1999, might be under threat. However, the Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces said in a communique on 13 May that the military would “never use arms in the search for solutions ... within the framework of possible divergences in its normal relations with the government or any other democratically elected organ.”