CONAKRY, Guinea — The Obama administration has injected itself into the crisis in Guinea, taking the unusual step of sending a senior diplomat to protest the mass killings and rapes here last week.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for “appropriate actions” against a military government that she said “cannot remain in power.”
“It was criminality of the greatest degree, and those who committed such acts should not be given any reason to expect that they will escape justice,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters in Washington. She said that the nation’s leader, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, and his government “must turn back to the people the right to choose their own leaders.”
The military seized power here last December, and pressure has been rising as Captain Camara, 45, backed off a pledge not to run in this country’s presidential elections in January. At a demonstration against him on Sept. 28, witnesses said soldiers opened fire on the crowds and raped and sexually assaulted female protesters. Human rights officials estimate that as many as 157 people were killed. The government has put the number at 56.
On Monday, William Fitzgerald, deputy assistant secretary of state, met with Captain Camara for two hours. He said he insisted, in strong language, that Captain Camara was responsible for the violence, despite the military strongman’s repeated denials. Mr. Fitzgerald said he also repeated that Captain Camara should not run in the elections, a key opposition demand.
“The message is, what happened on September 28 is totally unacceptable, from every way you look at it — the killings, the gender violence,” Mr. Fitzgerald said in an interview at the United States Embassy here Tuesday. “I said, ‘Mr. President, whether you like it or not, it’s tied to you. You are responsible for September 28. The buck stops with you.’ ”
The response from the captain was noncommittal, he said.
American pressure is limited in French-speaking West Africa, a region to which it has typically paid scant attention. But Mr. Fitzgerald’s meeting with Captain Camara is seen as significant by Africa experts as an example of President Obama’s push for good governance and human rights on the continent — the focus of a speech he gave in Ghana in July that is still widely commented on.
A month later, Mrs. Clinton traveled to eastern Congo to speak out against the systematic rape of girls and young women amid the sectarian strife there. She has made the fight against mass rape a major theme in a foreign policy that focuses on the plight of women in the developing world.
Mr. Fitzgerald’s visit comes after a week of international expressions of disgust over the violence at the Stade du 28 Septembre here. The stadium is named for the day in 1958 when Guineans voted against an offer of partnership from their colonial master, France, setting the stage for independence days later. Guinea was the first country in French-speaking Africa to declare independence.
The military government has claimed that many victims at the stadium were trampled. On Tuesday, The New York Times obtained photographs showing bodies in a pile and lined up, perhaps as many as 20, with no blood on them. But the bodies shown represent only a portion of the perhaps 160 dead, and scores of witnesses insist that most people were shot.
Days after the protest, the major hospital was still treating people suffering from gunshot wounds, and scores of people say they are still missing loved ones.
Sidya Touré, a former prime minister, who was at the stadium and was beaten by soldiers, said he saw the anonymously circulated pictures and speculated that the government allowed the bodies to be photographed to back their claims.
He said about 20 were indeed trampled in the frenzy of running from the bullets. But he, like many others, is adamant about the shooting.
“Absolutely,” he said in an interview Tuesday night. He said he was seated in the stands, with other opposition leaders.
“I saw people falling in front of me. I said, ‘Why are these people falling?’ ” Then, he said, he looked to his left. “I absolutely saw soldiers firing directly on people.”
France, a traditional partner of Guinea, has suspended military aid, and Sunday its foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said: “It seems to me that today, one can no longer work with Dadis Camara, and there should be an international intervention.”
Captain Camara reacted angrily to these statements, telling reporters Monday that “Guinea is not a subprefecture, is not a neighborhood in France.”
The Economic Community of West African States, an alliance of West African nations, on Monday sent the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, as a mediator between Captain Camara and the opposition. Diplomats and opposition figures here are skeptical, however, about Mr. Compaoré’s chances, as the opposition has insisted on a condition Captain Camara has not been willing to concede: that he not run for president.
American diplomats have previously refused to meet with Captain Camara. The special circumstances of last week’s massacre, however, dictated a meeting, diplomats suggested, and added urgency to their previous insistence that he not run.
“He’s a president in a bubble,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I don’t think his advisers are telling him the truth about his popularity and his standing in the world.”
Captain Camara, known for a somewhat disjointed speaking style that is often hard to penetrate, nonetheless “was lucid,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.
“There was no evidence of drinking or drug-taking,” he said.
“In America’s view, Moussa Dadis Camara can’t be president, and we are going to hold him to that,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.
He acknowledged that “America’s leverage is not as strong here as it is in many parts of Africa,” but he said that sanctions, a visa ban and an asset freeze were all possibilities.
“I did say that he was becoming a pariah among world leaders, and that he had to think long and hard about possibly running for president, because the international community would not accept him as a leader,” Mr. Fitzgerald said.
Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington.Wikio
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