Guinea settles army pay dispute with mass promotion

Guinea's authorities have granted promotions to all junior ranks of the army in a final settlement to end a military pay mutiny that shook the world's leading bauxite exporter last month, officials said on Saturday.

Mutinous troops based mainly at the West African country's biggest military base in the capital Conakry had revolted over pay claims, looting shops and officers' homes and shooting into the air in protests which killed at least six people.

Although the barracks' protests in the former French colony ended two weeks ago after the authorities promised to pay salary arrears, the mutineers had continued haggling with military commanders over their demands for promotions.

In a final settlement agreed on Friday, all junior ranks from corporal to chief warrant officer were granted promotions to the next level, officials said.

"We hope that with this the mutiny is over once and for all," a senior military officer told Reuters.

Analysts have warned that the ease with which President Lansana Conte's government caved in to the mutineers' demands sets a bad precedent for the future and could lead to further unrest in the barracks with soldiers making even more demands.

The pay mutiny had erupted after Conte dismissed Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate on May 20, 15 months after he was named as a consensus choice for premier to defuse a violent general strike last year in which more than 130 people were killed.



STRIKE FEARS

Conte's appointment of former mines minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare as his new prime minister was contested by the main unions and opposition party, raising fears of another strike.

Guinea holds a third of the world's known reserves of bauxite, the ore used to make aluminium, and Canadian, U.S. and Russian companies operate mines and plants there.

To halt indiscriminate shooting last month by the protesting soldiers, which rained down bullets onto terrified residents in Conakry and other cities, Prime Minister Souare had already agreed to pay the mutineers 5 million Guinean francs ($1,100) each in claimed salary arrears.

He also sacked the defence minister.

Souare has yet to name his new cabinet but Conte announced in a decree late on Friday that the new government would be expanded to 36 members, from a previous 22.

Guinea's small but restless armed forces, which suffer from generational and ethnic divisions, have long been a prop for the ageing diabetic president since he seized power in a 1984 coup.

But they have staged several mutinies and protests over the last 12 years, mostly over pay and conditions, and analysts say the latest rapid government concessions to military mutineers show up the fragility of Conte's rule.