President of Guinea-Bissau requests Security Council help with salaries, elections
The President of Guinea-Bissau, Henrique Perreira Rosa, today appealed to the United Nations Security Council to help
his West African country pay its civil servants the salaries owed them and assist his transitional government in
preparing peaceful elections.
After a closed-door meeting, President Rosa told journalists that he made two requests of the 15-member body during his
first-ever encounter with the Council.
"As you know we are the transitional authority. We need immediate and urgent help to pay government employees a year's
salaries," he said, adding that his Government was preparing to submit a formal request for assistance from donor
countries by the end of next month.
Joining him at the meeting to brief the Council were the President of the UN Economic and Social Council, Ambassador
Gert Rosenthal of Guatemala, the Representative of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Nana Akufo
Addo, and Henrique Valle, representative of the Community of Portuguese-speaking countries.
David Stephen, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's Representative for Guinea-Bissau, was also scheduled to speak at the
meeting chaired by Foreign Minister João Bernardo de Miranda of Angola, which currently holds the Council's rotating
Presidency.
The Government of President Kumba Yala failed to pay salaries, leading to waves of strikes by teachers, health care
workers and other government employees. The strikes brought a military junta to power in mid-September, but it has
pledged to hold elections.
"We will hold elections in the future, according to the charter signed in Guinea-Bissau, that is to say, by March of
2004," Mr. Rosa said. "We hope those elections will go well, but for that the international community must help us to
establish a favourable atmosphere so people can vote freely - with transparency and freedom."
Mr. Rosa, an economist and businessman, headed the National Election Commission for the first multi-party elections in
1994. His Government must prepare for parliamentary elections by next March and for presidential elections a year later.
He said the country still had the infrastructure and institutions necessary to hold the upcoming elections.