Nguema calls for dialogue

EQUATORIAL Guinea’s authoritarian president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has called for national dialogue after a thwarted coup and crackdown on the opposition.

In a speech broadcast nationally on state television yesterday, the leader, 76, said dialogue and political interaction would take place next month.

“[They] constitute the ways to preserve peace and development,” he said.

He called on Guineans living abroad “to come home, to the country of our birth, to look for all-embracing, inclusive strategies”.

A former Spanish colony awash with oil but mired in poverty and corruption, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled with an iron fist by Obiang since 1979. He seized power by ousting his own uncle, president Francisco Macias Nguema, who was shot by firing squad. – AFP