EU threatens to isolate Mauritania junta after coup
PARIS (AFP) — The French presidency of the European Union warned Wednesday that the junta that seized power earlier this month in Mauritania faced isolation from the international community.
"The European Union warns the military junta that the country faces the serious risk of long-lasting isolation from the international scene," the presidency said in a statement issued in Paris.
The EU "reiterates with the greatest firmness its condemnation of the coup that took place in Mauritania" on August 6, said the statement.
The bloc denounced as "devoid of all legitimacy" the bloodless coup in which a group of generals, led by the former head of the presidential guard General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, ousted Mauritania's first democratically elected president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi.
The EU demanded the junta restore the institutions to how they were before the coup and offered its support to ongoing negotiations being led by the African Union and the Arab league.
The junta said Tuesday it had issued a "constitutional ordinance", giving it the legal basis to rule until presidential elections could be held.
Mauritania's prime minister prior to the coup, Yahya Ould Ahmed Waghf, was freed Monday and, according to security sources, Abdallahi was being held in a villa on the grounds of the Nouakchott congress centre.
This weekend representatives from the EU, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United States told Ould Abdel Aziz they would oppose any "unilateral" elections.
France -- the former colonial power in Mauritania and the country that currently holds EU's rotating presidency -- has frozen part of its aid to the impoverished country.
Representatives from the United Nations, the Arab League and the African Union have visited Mauritania since the coup to talk with the new junta leader, but did not make any statements.
On Sunday the president of Mauritania's national assembly, Messoud Ould Boulkheir, pledged his full support to the deposed president and said he would not agree to any presidential elections staged by the coup leaders.
But 67 out of 95 Mauritanian members of Parliament later rejected his statement in a joint declaration saying he was only speaking for himself.
The 2007 elections that Abdallahi won were hailed as a model of democracy for Africa, following a three-year transition after a bloodless coup in August 2005.
