Comoros minister says AU members back rebel sanctions
19 Sep 2007 16:55:20 GMT Source: Reuters
By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN, Sept 19 (Reuters) - Some senior African Union ministers have endorsed targeted economic sanctions against rebel leaders in the Comoros' breakaway island of Anjouan, a minister from the coup-prone African archipelago said. AU ministers met in Cape town on Tuesday to discuss the standoff between tiny Anjouan and the government of Comoros, a fragile Islamic state of 700,000 people in the Indian Ocean where rebels held elections the AU has called null and void. The AU ministers did not discuss the possibility of military intervention to end the crisis, but Comoros Foreign Minister Ahmed Ben Said Jaffar told Reuters on Wednesday several ministers endorsed sanctions. "These are gradual measures which aim at imposing, for instance, sanctions to the separatist authorities and among those measures, are for instance, to stop them from moving abroad and to freeze their assets and accounts wherever they are," he said through an interpreter. Anjouan is one of three semi-autonomous islands that make up the Comoros. Comorian soldiers tried unsuccessfully in May to take control of Anjouan buildings in a bid to install a replacement president as mandated by a court. The federal government has been threatening to try again since the failed takeover. Comorian President Ahmed Abdallah Mohamed Sambi, a preacher-turned-politician, has demanded that Anjouan hold fair elections, but the island's self-appointed leaders, including rebel leader Mohamed Bacar, have refused. Bacar, who attended the AU meeting in Cape Town, was not available for comment. Jaffar accused Bacar and his supporters of not being seriously interested in resolving the dispute through dialogue.
