CONAKRY, Dec 23: Mutinous Guinean soldiers launched a coup attempt on Tuesday hours after the death was announced of the West African nation’s long-serving President Lansana Conte. But the head of the army said he believed the plotters were in the minority.

The mutineers broadcast a communique on state radio suspending the constitution and the government. It was not clear how much support they had for their bid to take over the bauxite exporting country.

“I think they are in the minority ... they are not the majority in the army,” Guinea’s armed forces chief, General Diarra Camara, told French TV station France 24.

Officials said negotiations were held at the main Alpha Yaya Diallo military base in Conakry’s suburbs, between soldiers and officers who supported the coup and those who wanted to stay loyal to constitutional procedure.

National Assembly President Aboubacar Sompare, who under the constitution should take over as interim head of state following Conte’s death on Monday, told French TV an “attempted coup d’etat” was under way.

Shots were heard from the neighbourhood of the Alpha Yaya Diallo camp, residents said. But despite the presence of heavily-armed military patrols, and at least one tank in the streets, the dilapidated seaside capital Conakry was calm.

“I don’t think all of the army are behind the mutineers ...

It’s a group,” Sompare told France 24, speaking from his home in the capital Conakry.

The attempted coup was launched just hours after government leaders said Conte, believed to be 74, had died from illness following nearly a quarter century of rule over the country, the world’s leading exporter of bauxite aluminium ore.

In radio broadcasts, the soldiers attempting the coup told government leaders to go to the Alpha Yaya Diallo camp “for their protection”, but Sompare said he and Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare were still at liberty.

Former colonial power France, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, said it would oppose any coup in Guinea, a position echoed by the African Union and the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.

Heavily-armed soldiers guarded the strategic road bridge giving access to downtown Conakry, the presidency and the central bank, and also patrolled the streets in pick-up trucks. As the military vehicles passed, some civilians applauded, chanting “president, president”.

In an earlier broadcast on state radio announcing the suspension of the constitution, one of the coup-plotters, Captain Moussa Davis Camara, said a National Council for Democracy and Development was taking over.

NATION “ON THE PRECIPICE: The broadcast cited what it called widespread corruption and a “catastrophic economic situation” to justify the dissolving of the government, which it said was largely responsible for this.

The death of Conte, a diabetic, chain-smoking general, left a power vacuum in the bauxite exporter, where companies like Alcoa, Rio Tinto Alcan and Russia’s RUSAL have major operations.—Reuters