West Africa to impose bans, freeze assets of Guinea junta

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ACCRA – West African leaders person decided to enforce question bans and frost fiscal assets of members of Guinea’s ruling junta and their families aft a coup much than a week ago, according to the bloc known arsenic ECOWAS.

The decisions were announced Thursday aft an Extraordinary Summit connected Guinea successful Ghana’s capital, Accra. Mediators with the determination radical had traveled to Guinea to conscionable with junta leaders and cheque connected the information of deposed President Alpha Conde.

ECOWAS president Jean Claude Brou said the West African leaders person besides insisted that determination should beryllium nary “need for precise agelong modulation for the state to instrumentality to antiauthoritarian order.”

The targeted sanctions travel aft Guinea’s coup leaders acceptable a fig of conditions for releasing Conde, according to the overseas curate of Ghana.

ECOWAS had already warned it volition enforce penalties connected the junta successful Guinea unless it instantly releases Conde, who has been held astatine an undisclosed determination since being detained during the Sept. 5 coup successful Conakry.

“We are coming to code a burning contented successful the region,” said Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the existent seat of the determination bloc, up of the summit. He was joined by presidents oregon high-ranking officials from 8 of the different 15 ECOWAS countries.

Members of the ECOWAS delegation that visited Conakry aft the coup presented their reports astatine Thursday’s meeting, said Ghanaian Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway. The junta has acceptable a fig of conditions for complying with the demands of determination mediators, she said, but declined to disclose what they are.

The delegation has spoken with Conde’s doc “who ascertained that so physically, he’s precise well,” she said. However, she said, the ex-president is inactive coming to presumption with the information that his authorities has been toppled aft much than a decennary successful power.

“For anybody who has gone done specified a traumatic acquisition similar helium did, mentally, it’s not the best, not to accidental that mentally we recovered thing wrong, but helium was rather shocked; he’s inactive successful a authorities of shock,” she added.

Meanwhile successful Conakry, junta leaders were besides acceptable to conscionable with mining institution representatives connected the 3rd time of a peculiar acme to illustration Guinea’s governmental future. Junta person Col. Mamady Doumbouya has sought to reassure the country’s astir captious economical assemblage that the governmental changes volition not interaction existing mining projects successful the country, which has the world’s largest reserves of bauxite.

Guinea’s coup leaders person yet to marque nationalist their projected timeframe for handing implicit powerfulness to a civilian transitional government, nor person they outlined however rapidly caller elections tin beryllium organized.

Conde had sparked convulsive thoroughfare demonstrations past twelvemonth aft helium pushed for a law referendum that helium utilized to warrant moving for a 3rd term, saying word limits nary longer applied to him. He yet won different 5 years successful bureau past October, lone to beryllium toppled by the coup 10 months later.

At the clip helium came to powerfulness successful 2010, helium was Guinea’s archetypal democratically elected person since independency from France successful 1958.

The determination bloc besides planned to tackle concerns implicit whether a 2nd subordinate state, Mali, is making capable advancement toward a instrumentality to ideology much than a twelvemonth aft a subject takeover there.

In Mali, the ruling junta led by Col. Assimi Goita has committed to holding caller elections by February 2022, though mediators who precocious visited person expressed interest astir whether that deadline present tin beryllium met.

Goita overthrew Mali’s president successful August 2020 and past agreed to a civilian transitional authorities and an 18-month timeframe for holding a vote. However, lone 9 months aft the archetypal coup helium efficaciously staged a 2nd one, firing the civilian interim leaders and yet naming himself arsenic president of the transition.

ECOWAS has not reinstated Mali’s rank successful the bloc, marking the archetypal clip since 2012 that 2 of the 15 subordinate states are suspended concurrently.

ECOWAS president Brou said determination was the request to revisit the organization’s 2001 protocol connected bully governance “because a batch of things person changed oregon improved.”

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Associated Press writers Krista Larson successful Dakar, Senegal and Boubacar Diallo successful Conakry, Guinea contributed.

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