Guinea-Bissau's transitional government is normalizing the country, Annan says
Calling the brief military coup in Guinea-Bissau "the culmination of an untenable situation," United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the international community to recommend ways of preventing democratically elected governments in post-conflict countries flouting the basic practices of governance.
In Guinea-Bissau, the removal in September of democratically elected President Koumba Yala, "however reprehensible," took place after "constitutional norms were repeatedly violated," he says in his latest report to the UN Security Council on the West African country.
The Transitional Government has taken important steps in the right direction by scheduling 16 December elections for President and Vice-President of the Supreme Court and planning for legislative elections within the six-month period stipulated in the Political Transition Charter, Mr. Annan says.
It has created a new system of paying civil service salaries through banking agencies so as to eliminate "ghost workers" and has paid those salaries for October. Under Mr. Yala's rule, Government workers had not been paid for several months.
Police officers were fulfilling their duties, meanwhile, despite mounting salary arrears. The UN Peace-Building Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNOGBIS) is assisting the Transitional Government in establishing a police training centre, he says.
The military, too, has a problem with wage arrears and combatants live in poor conditions in their barracks. The UN Multi-Donor Trust Fund, meanwhile, has covered only 4,372 of the 11,300 ex-combatants who wish to be re-integrated into the army or into civilian life and the World Bank has partially restructured its portfolio to help with the programme.
The news media are functioning normally and reflect a wider range of opinion, but because of technical problems, television has not been on the air since mid-November, he says.
As the Government has moved to restore working relations with other countries, China is building a new National Assembly in Guinea-Bissau.