Windhoek
The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU) at its 544th meeting held last Friday strongly condemned the coup in Burkina Faso and the abduction of its transitional president and prime minister.
The 20-point communiqué issued by the AU noted the abduction of the Burkinabe interim president and the prime minister at the hands of the Régiment de sécurité présidentielle (RSP) constituted a serious threat to peace, security and stability in Burkina Faso, the region and Africa as a whole.
Since last week on Wednesday RSP members abducted and illegally detained the president of the transition, Michel Kafando, the transitional prime minister, Yacouba Isaac Zida, and some members of government in the coup-prone nation of 17 million people.
The AU further welcomed the statements made by the UN Security Council as well as the European Union (EU) and called for a return to the previous status quo.
It further called for the implementation of the recommendations made in a communiqué issued last year in November in which the AU restated its support to the transition process.
It reiterated that the transition should be supported including through the establishment or jointly through the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United Nations (UN).
Meanwhile the president of Cote d’Ivoire Alassane Ouattara over the weekend appealed for peace in Burkina Faso, a neighbouring country going through a political crisis following last week’s coup.
“We want peace in Burkina Faso. We appeal for peaceful, transparent and democratic elections in this friendly country,” the Cote d’Ivoire president said on Saturday during a press conference in Abidjan.
“We have always had the same position that everything should be done to ensure these elections are peaceful and our position has not changed,” he said, insisting that Burkina Faso’s elections should be held this year to end the transition.
Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso are two countries that have “historic ties”
Deposed through a popular uprising in October last year, Burkina Faso’s ex-president Blaise Compaore fled into exile in Cote d’Ivoire.
Burkina Faso soldiers, led by a former army boss during Compaore’s regime, Gen. Gilbert Diendere, seized power on Wednesday last week, ending the political transition, with less than a month before the presidential and legislative elections.