West Africans lift Togo sanctions

[XXPANTHAXX]

The West African regional grouping Ecowas says it is lifting
sanctions against Togo with immediate effect.

The move follows the announcement by Togolese leader Faure
Gnassingbe that he is stepping down after increasing
international pressure.

Mr Faure was installed three weeks ago as president by the
military, immediately after the death of his father,
Gnassingbe Eyadema.

He will be replaced on an acting basis by parliament speaker
Abass Bonfoh.


Abass Bonfoh, vice president of the national assemby and Togo's new interim head of state.

Faure Gnassingbe said he wanted to ensure the transparency of
the election now due in April, in which he plans to stand as
a candidate.

The UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, also welcomed Mr
Faure's decision.

'Borrowed robes'

A spokeswoman for Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo, who
chairs the African Union, described Mr Faure's decision as
a "victory for democracy".

"What happened in Togo was a coup d'etat dressed in the
borrowed robes of democracy and we are glad that Faure
Gnassingbe has finally realised the folly of what happened,"
Remi Oyo said, quoted by AFP news agency.

"For so long Africa has had a bad image. This is eloquent
testimony that Africa can create solutions to its own
problems," she added.

The UN and African Union imposed sanctions on Togo after Mr
Faure was installed as president by the army hours after the
death of his father earlier this month.

Although he promised elections within 60 days, as stipulated
by the constitution, this did little to quell protests from
African neighbours and beyond.

Constitutional amendments swiftly introduced to legitimise Mr
Faure's appointment have since been partly reversed.

Late on Friday, the country's ruling party nominated Mr Faure
as its new candidate for the presidential election.

Earlier this week, he visited Gabon and then Libya, for a
meeting with President Muammar Gaddafi.

[IfasehunReincarnated]

Exiled Togo Opposition Chief to Run for President

Thu Mar 3, 7:23 AM ET
World - Reuters

By Nick Tattersall

DAKAR (Reuters) - Togo's main opposition leader said on Thursday he planned to stand in presidential elections aimed at ending a political crisis but said there was no agreement yet on how to make the vote free and fair.

"I am the candidate for my party. My party has just nominated me as their flag bearer," Gilchrist Olympio told Reuters by telephone from Paris, where he has lived in exile since an assassination attempt in 1992.

African leaders have been trying to broker an agreement on how to organize elections in the tiny West African country, plunged into turmoil last month on the death of Gnassingbe Eyadema, its authoritarian leader for almost four decades.

Eyadema amended the constitution in 2002 to say that any presidential candidate must have lived in the country for at least a year prior to the vote, barring Olympio from standing. The opposition says that means the election cannot be fair.

"There are a lot of things that Eyadema changed to make sure that only he could stand in elections," Olympio, who leads the Union of Forces for Change (UFC) party, said.

"We have been asking to go to elections for the past 38 years -- elections that are fair and transparent ... At the moment the conditions are far from ideal."

Togo's army named Eyadema's son, Faure Gnassingbe, as leader hours after his death, triggering an international outcry, African sanctions and bringing thousands of opposition supporters onto the streets of the dust-clogged capital.

Gnassingbe stepped down under huge pressure last Friday, handing over to an interim leader. He plans to run as the candidate of the ruling party in the presidential election.

ANOTHER CHALLENGER

Olympio could face a challenge from Kofi Yamgnane, a Togolese with dual French nationality who lives in Paris and who told a French newspaper he too planned to stand.

"Eyadema's son is behaving like he is still the president. He is still using the presidential plane. The military wants to cram the urns full of Eyadema ballot papers," Yamgnane told Le Monde in an article to be published later on Thursday.

Yamgnane, a former French junior minister, mediated in Togo's political crisis in the early 1990s. He has expressed a desire to unite opponents of the governing party.

The presidents of Niger and Mali and senior officials from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) were in Togo earlier this week to urge the opposition and the government to work together on planning fair elections.

ECOWAS said on Wednesday the various stages of organizing the vote -- not least allowing candidates enough time to campaign -- meant polling would not be able to take place until April 24 at the earliest.

The opposition, including the UFC, said it had reaffirmed to ECOWAS its commitment to the vote, provided it was transparent, but urged the regional grouping to push harder for a political agreement that would allow Olympio to stand.

"The six opposition parties will present a document in the coming days to those organizing the presidential election outlining all the other proposed measures necessary for holding the vote," it said in a statement late on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Kerstin Gehmlich in Paris)