Mutinous soldiers seized control of the airwaves in Guinea and declared a coup Tuesday hours after the death of the West African country's longtime dictator President Lansana Conte, but the Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare insisted he remained in charge. The troops appeared less than an hour after Souare announced in a state broadcast that he was inside his office and that his government had not been dissolved. A group calling itself the National Council for Democracy began announcing its takeover on state-run radio and TV, just hours after Conte's death was made public. “The government is dissolved. The institutions of the republic are dissolved. ... From this moment on, the council is taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people,” said the coup leader, who identified himself as Capt. Moussa Camara. Parliamentary speaker Aboubacar Sompare, who under the constitution should replace Conte, urged Guinean soldiers to oppose the coup. “There is indeed an attempted coup d'etat,” said Sompare in a telephone interview. Conte, who was believed to be in his 70s, was only Guinea's second president since it gained independence from France a half-century ago. He was one of the last members of a dwindling group of so-called “African Big Men” who came to power by the gun and resisted the democratic tide sweeping the continent. While Guinea has managed to avoid the catastrophic wars that have ravaged its West African neighbors, there is a “real risk of violence in Conakry” regardless of who is officially in charge. “Much will depend on whether another strongman emerges or not in the coming days,” said Jean-Herve Jezequel, a West Africa scholar in France who works for the MSF Foundation. Jezequel predicted that any new leadership, even military-based, will likely hold presidential elections in part to appease the country's labor unions. The European Union called on political and military leaders to “respect constitutional measures to ensure a peaceful transition” via elections. Guinea boasts half the world's known reserves of bauxite, the ore used to produce aluminum, and it has deposits of gold, diamonds and iron ore. But Guinea's economy has rapidly deteriorated and its 10 million people have remained among the poorest in the world.
