The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Guinea finally reached a compromise.

Guinea's ruling junta has agreed to return power to civilians after two years, giving up under threat of imminent sanctions to rule the country for three years.

"In a dynamic compromise, experts from ECOWAS and Guinea have jointly developed a consolidated chronogram (calendar) of the transition spread over 24 months", says an ECOWAS document sent to an AFP correspondent on Friday and published on social networks by the junta.

The head of the junta, Mamady Doumbouya then clarified that this calendar takes effect from January 1, 2023, during the closing ceremony of the ECOWAS technical mission dispatched to Conakry this week, broadcast on national television RTG.

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The timetable should be presented to the next ECOWAS summit "for its approval in order to trigger its implementation", says the document of the regional organization.

An ordinary ECOWAS summit is scheduled before the end of the year.

Colonel Mamady Doumbouya took power by force on September 5, 2021 by overthrowing civilian President Alpha Condé with his men.

He has since been sworn in as president.

He pledged to hand over to civilians after elections.

The junta had so far affirmed its intention to govern for three years, the time for it to organize credible elections and carry out important reforms necessary for what it calls a "refoundation" of the Guinean state. .

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ECOWAS said such a delay is unacceptable.

On September 22, the leaders of the member states meeting at a summit in New York without Guinea had given the authorities one month to present a "reasonable and acceptable" timetable, failing which "more severe sanctions" than those already imposed would be applied.

However, the bridges have never been broken and the Guinean authorities have repeated that they are ready to cooperate with ECOWAS, which this week sent a mission to Conakry to work out a compromise schedule.

Guinean Prime Minister Bernard Goumou said on Thursday that the authorities were "not set in stone" over the three years.

Civilian casualties

Various West African officials had signaled that a two-year period would be acceptable.

It was over a similar period that ECOWAS and the junta in power in a neighboring country, Mali, had come to an agreement after months of arm wrestling and severe regional retaliatory measures.

Under an agreement reached in July, the Malian military is supposed to leave in March 2024. They would then have actually stayed for more than three and a half years since they overthrew the civilian president elected in August 2020.

For more than two years, ECOWAS has seen a succession of military coups in West Africa, twice in 2020 and 2021 in Mali, in 2021 in Guinea and twice in 2022 in Burkina Faso.

It multiplies the summits, the missions and the pressures to shorten the so-called transition periods and stem the contagion, but it is confronted with authorities who do not intend to let go of the controls anytime soon.

ECOWAS has suspended Guinea from its authorities.

On September 22, it suspended all assistance and financial transactions with Guinea and announced against a certain number of personalities the freezing of their financial assets and a ban on traveling in the ECOWAS area.

The compromise reached in Conakry was achieved in a climate of confrontation between the junta and the opposition.

At least four civilians were killed Thursday and Friday during demonstrations against the junta at the call of a citizens' collective which calls for a rapid return of civilians to power and the release of all prisoners detained for political reasons.

The opposition accuses the junta of confiscating power and silencing any dissenting voices through arrests of political or civil society leaders, and judicial inquiries.

The major parties refuse dialogue with the junta on the content of the so-called transition period under the conditions set by the authorities.

They ask that the dialogue take place under the arbitration of ECOWAS.

The report of the ECOWAS mission affirms the will of the latter to associate all the parties for an "inclusive implementation of the transition timetable".

With AFP 

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