Burkina President Says He’s Back In Charge

Burkina Faso inter­im pres­i­dent Michel Kafando, who was tak­en hostage dur­ing a coup last week, said on Wednesday he was back in pow­er and had restored a civil­ian tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment. However, it was unclear who was real­ly in charge after the rebellion’s leader attend­ed a state function.

“I have returned to work,” Kafando told jour­nal­ists at the for­eign min­istry in Ouagadougou.“The tran­si­tion is back and at this very minute is exer­cis­ing the pow­er of the state.”

At about the same time, around 3 miles away, coup leader General Gilbert Diendere appeared at the air­port, backed by a con­tin­gent of his pres­i­den­tial guard, to wel­come region­al lead­ers arriv­ing to try to nego­ti­ate an end to the crisis.

Burkina Faso’s mil­i­tary stepped up pres­sure on Diendere and his sol­diers in recent days to cede pow­er, threat­en­ing to dis­arm them by force if nec­es­sary. It said it had reached an agree­ment with mem­bers of Diendere’s force overnight.

While troops loy­al to the gov­ern­ment were not vis­i­ble on the streets of Ouagadougou Wednesday, pres­i­den­tial guard sol­diers back­ing Diendere main­tained their posi­tions at the nation­al tele­vi­sion head­quar­ters, despite the deal that required them to be con­fined to bar­racks to avoid clashes.

The head of pro­to­col for the pres­i­den­cy, present at the air­port, told Reuters that an offi­cial cer­e­mo­ny dur­ing which pow­er would be hand­ed back to the tran­si­tion­al author­i­ties was sched­uled for lat­er on Wednesday. Until then, he said Diendere would remain in charge.

Leaders from Nigeria, Senegal, Niger, Togo, Benin and Ghana were due to arrive, under­lin­ing region­al con­cern for a coun­try that was less that a month away from Oct. 11 elec­tions when the rebelling sol­diers raid­ed the cabinet.

They were due to meet the coup lead­ers and tran­si­tion­al author­i­ties to nego­ti­ate a final set­tle­ment to restore the civil­ian government.

One by one, Diendere extend­ed a full state wel­come to each arriv­ing leader, greet­ing them on a red car­pet and stand­ing beside them as a mil­i­tary band played their nation­al anthems.

The October elec­tion was meant to restore Burkina Faso to democ­ra­cy after last year’s over­throw of long­time ruler Blaise Compaore by massed crowds protest­ing against his plans to extend his rule.

Diendere is the for­mer spy chief and right-hand man of Compaore.

Compaore’s over­throw had made Burkina Faso a bea­con for demo­c­ra­t­ic aspi­ra­tions in Africa, where vet­er­an rulers in coun­tries from Rwanda to Congo Republic are seek­ing to scrap con­sti­tu­tion­al term limits.:Read more here :Burkina pres­i­dent says he’s back in charge