SAF coup dissolved government, well done!

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100219/ts_afp/nigerunrest_20100219013131


Niger soldiers stage coup, dissolve government
AFP


Niger soldiers stage coup, dissolve government AFP – People walking past a hole in the wall surrounding the national Mediator headquarters close to the presidential …
by Boureima Hama Boureima Hama – Thu Feb 18, 8:28 pm ET

NIAMEY (AFP) – Niger's new military council announced it had dissolved the government of President Mamadou Tandja after seizing power in the west African country.

Earlier soldiers in the impoverished but uranium-rich nation Niger mounted a coup d'etat and seized Tandja amid gunbattles that killed at least three troops .

"The Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy (CSRD) ...has decided to suspend the constitution of the Sixth Republic and dissolve all its institutions," its spokesman colonel Goukoye Abdoulkarim said.

Tandja defied local and international calls last year to change the constitution to allow himself to extend his grip on power.

Gunfire and loud explosions reverberated across the capital Niamey as soldiers assaulted the presidential palace where Tandja, the country's strongman for the past decade, presided over a cabinet meeting.

The military council declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and announced the closure of border entry points.

A French diplomat said Tandja's own guard took part in the coup.

Tandja was reportedly detained at a military barrack as his ministers were also held elsewhere.

"We want to know what has happened. It is our country and no one wants to set it ablaze," said one of Tandja's ministers, contacted by mobile telephone from Niamey and speaking on condition of anonymity. Related article: Mamadou Tandja, ex-soldier who casts shadow over Niger

"We cannot move freely, we cannot go out. They have taken away Mamadou Tandja," he added.

The other minister said: "We do not know what is happening, we are not free to move about, but we have our mobile telephones with us and we are where the cabinet meeting was to take place."

The military council called on the people of Niger -- ranked last at 182 on the UN Human Development Index for 2009 -- to say calm and united around its ideals of "restoring democracy and good governance".

An African diplomat based in Niger -- a landlocked West African nation that is the world's third-biggest uranium producer -- confirmed the capture, saying several senior government figures had been arrested.

"Tandja is among them. The rebels have taken the upper hand," he said.

Another official told AFP that Tandja was believed to be held in a military barrack on the outskirts of the capital.

"President Tandja and his aide-de-camp may be held at a garrison in Tondibia," about 20 kilometres (15 miles) west of Niamey, the official said on condition of anonymity.

State radio suspended its regular programmes and played martial music.

Ex-colonel Tandja, 71, extended his term through a controversial referendum last August after dissolving parliament and the constitutional court, leading to the west African nation's isolation in the international stage.

Witnesses said they saw the bodies of at least three soldiers being lifted out of a badly damaged armoured vehicle which pulled up outside the morgue of the main hospital.

One said he had seen a rocket striking the vehicle.

At least 10 soldiers were injured, a medical source said.

France, the colonial power in Niger until independence in August 1960, urged its nationals to stay indoors. French nuclear giant Areva is the country's biggest private employer.

"We heard automatic gunfire and then large detonations. The house was shaking. It lasted about a half hour, non-stop," said Claire Deschamps, one French national living in Niamey. She said the violence began around 1200 GMT.

Army helicopters hovered over the presidency during the afternoon.

Sporadic shooting continued into the afternoon before gradually subsiding.

The city was largely calm as the population fled into their homes and soldiers deployed across the city. Chronology: Political crisis in Niger

An AFP correspondent outside the presidency complex said he saw an armoured personnel carrier driven out of the palace gates, before he was ordered away by a soldier.

The African Union condemned the violence in Niger, the latest in a litany of states such as Guinea, Madagascar and Mauritania, where coups and unrest have replaced democratic rule.

"We are always concerned when there is threat of a coup or reports on an ongoing 'coup d'Etat' in Africa. It is contrary to what we want the continent to be, that is a continent free of coups," the AU's security commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said in Addis Ababa.

The 15-nation west African grouping ECOWAS which has been mediating talks to resolve Niger's political crisis condemned the coup bid saying it "rejects any change of power through unconstitutional means and violence".

After dissolving parliament, Tandja forced parliamentary elections in October, which led ECOWAS to suspend Niger's membership. The European Union suspended development aid and the United States slapped sanctions. Factfile: Niger

Talks between Niger's government and the opposition to end the political standoff were suspended last week, having repeatedly stalled since they began on December 21.

Mediator Abdulsalami Abubakar has drawn up a road map for a solution which proposes keeping Tandja in power during a transition period led by a "government of national reconciliation."

 

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Re: SAF coup dissolved government, well done! Majullah Singapura!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100219/ap_on_re_af/af_niger_12


Niger soldiers go on state TV to confirm coup
AP

FILE - In this Friday, July 31, 2009 file photo Niger President Mamadou Tandja AP – FILE - In this Friday, July 31, 2009 file photo Niger President Mamadou Tandja speaks to journalists …

* Niger Slideshow:Niger

By DALATOU MAMANE and TODD PITMAN, Associated Press Writer Dalatou Mamane And Todd Pitman, Associated Press Writer – Thu Feb 18, 7:06 pm ET

NIAMEY, Niger – Renegade soldiers in armored vehicles stormed Niger's presidential palace with a hail of gunfire in broad daylight, kidnapping the country's strongman president and then appearing on state television to declare they staged a successful coup.

The soldiers also said Thursday on state TV that the country's constitution had been suspended and all its institutions dissolved. The spokesman for the soldiers said the country is now being led by the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy and asked their countrymen and the international community to have faith in their ideals which "could turn Niger into an example of democracy and of good governance."

Smoke rose from the white-hued multistory palace complex and the echo of machine-gunfire for at least two hours sent frightened residents running for cover, emptying the desert country's downtown boulevards at midday.

Traore Amadou, a local journalist who was in the presidency when the shooting began, said President Mamadou Tandja was kidnapped by mutinous troops.

French radio station Radio France Internationale reported that the soldiers burst in and neutralized the presidential guard before politely escorting Tandja outside to a waiting car which drove him toward a military camp on the outskirts of the capital. His whereabouts remained unknown hours later when the soldiers took to the airwaves to announce the coup.

Tandja first took power in democratic elections in 1999 that followed an era of coups and rebellions. But instead of stepping down as mandated by law on Dec. 22, he triggered a political crisis by pushing through a new constitution in August that removed term limits and gave him near-totalitarian powers.

Niger has become increasingly isolated since then, with the 15-nation regional bloc of West African states suspending Niger from its ranks and the U.S. government cutting off non-humanitarian aid and imposing travel restrictions on some government officials.

The ease with which Niger's democratic institutions have been swept aside has marked a setback for a region struggling to shake off autocratic rulers. In Guinea, a military junta seized power in December 2008 after the death of the country's longtime dictator, only to have the junta leader go into voluntary exile after he survived an assassination attempt a year later.

The nation's latest troubles began suddenly in Niamey on Thursday afternoon, when gunfire broke out around the impoverished nation's small presidency.

"Armored vehicles came into the palace and began shooting at the building," said Moussa Mounkaila, a palace driver. He said the mutinous troops had come from a military barracks at Tondibia, about seven miles (12 kilometers) west of the capital. Mounkaila said he saw smoke rising from the damaged presidency before he jumped over a wall and fled.

Tandja had just gathered government ministers for a Cabinet meeting when the gunfire erupted outside.

A diplomat in neighboring Burkina Faso said the mutinous soldiers are led by Col. Abdoulaye Adamou Harouna, the former aide-de-camp of Niger's previous coup leader Maj. Daouda Mallam Wanke. In Niamey, soldiers contacted by telephone inside their barracks said the coup was led by Col. Adamou Harouna, but gave a different first name — saying it was Djibril, not Abdoulaye, and did not confirm whether or not he was an aide to Wanke.

It was Wanke that led the 1999 coup, seizing power after the country's former military strongman was gunned down in an incident that was dubbed "an accident." Wanke, however, organized democratic elections less than a year later, which Tandja won. The diplomat, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media, said that Harouna — once Wanke's top aide — is part of an army faction that is deeply disillusioned with Tandja for violating his constitutionally mandated term limit.

They see him as having violated the trust the military initial placed in him when they ceded power in elections 11 years ago, he said. It was not immediately possible to confirm the diplomat's account or to resolve the discrepancy in the name.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was closely following developments and receiving regular updates from his Special Representative for West Africa Said Djinnit, U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

"It would be recalled that the secretary-general has called on the stakeholders in Niger to swiftly revert to constitutional order in the settlement of the political crisis that developed in that country last year," Okabe said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

In their broadcast on state TV, the soldiers said the country was now under a curfew and that all its borders had been sealed.

An Air France flight that was scheduled to land at Niamey on Thursday afternoon was diverted to neighboring Burkina Faso, said a company spokeswoman.

So was the private plane of the Senegalese foreign minister who had been dispatched by Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade and who was prevented from landing in Niger by the army, said Senegalese government spokesman Bamba Ndiaye.

Just days before Thursday's coup, Wade had been named mediator for Niger's political crisis by ECOWAS, a regional bloc of 15 West African countries.

After three coups hit Niger between 1974 and 1999, Tandja twice won votes deemed fair. But in the waning months of his final term, critics say he went down the path of many long-serving African despots, breaking a promise he had frequently made to step down when his term expired in December.

Opposition leaders say Tandja morphed from democrat to dictator over the course of several months last year. In May 2009, he dissolved the national assembly because it opposed his plan to hold a referendum removing term limits. The move was legal but the following month he invoked extraordinary powers to rule by decree, dissolving the constitutional court that also opposed his plan.

The two bodies represented the only real checks on his power. The last obstacle was the constitution itself, which contained a clause saying that the two-term limit could not be amended. In August, Tandja forced through a referendum boycotted by the opposition that created a new constitution. It gave him greatly boosted powers and an unprecedented three-year extension of his rule before another round of elections can be held.

The Aug. 4 vote came despite opposition from international donors who could cut crucial aid and from critics at home who say the Islamic nation's nascent democracy has been hijacked by a new African strongman.

Tandja claims he is only pushing to stay in power because his people have demanded it. He says they want him to finish several mammoth projects worth billions of dollars that have begun in recent months, including a hydroelectric dam, an oil refinery and what will be the largest uranium mine in Africa.

Uranium-rich Niger is ranked at the bottom on the U.N.'s worldwide human development index and has an astounding 70 percent illiteracy rate. The nation on the Sahara's southern edge has been perpetually battered by drought and desertification.

___

Associated Press Writers Angela Charlton in Paris, Brahima Ouadraogo in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Sadibou Marone, Todd Pitman and Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.