Police patrolled opposition areas of Guinea's capital on Wednesday after overnight protests against President Lansana Conte's sacking of a consensus prime minister appointed last year to end a bloody general strike.
Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate, a former diplomat, had repeatedly clashed with Conte and his close associates in the latest power struggle at the top of the world's leading exporter of bauxite, the raw ore used to make aluminium. Conte, a chain-smoking diabetic in his mid-70s who seized power in a 1984 army coup, sacked Kouyate without warning in a decree broadcast on Tuesday evening, replacing him with a former mines minister from his own party, Ahmed Tidiane Souare.
The news appeared to catch unawares the trade unions who had forced Kouyate's appointment early last year in a deal to end a general strike in which more than 130 people were killed - most of them shot dead by security forces staunchly loyal to Conte. "For now we have no comment. We haven't decided anything," leading union negotiator Boubacar Biro Barry told Reuters.
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