African Union officials emerged reassured Wednesday from talks with Mauritania's new military rulers, but said the country would remain suspended from the pan-African body until democracy returns.
A week after toppling president Maaouiya Ould Taya, Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall's Military Council for Justice and Democracy has succeeded in convincing foreign critics that it has overwhelming support for its programme for a new constitution and elections.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Oluyemi Adeniji, head of an AU mission which arrived in Nouakchott Tuesday, told reporters, "We are reassured because there is a consensus on the need for change.
"We think it will be much easier to steer the process for returning the country to democracy."
Adeniji, speaking in French, said that Vall "promised us that he will launch this programme and complete it as soon as possible, and we hope that this will be sooner than the two years which were mentioned."
The Nigerian minister, whose country currently holds the rotating AU presidency, praised the peaceful atmosphere in Mauritania and the unanimous approval of the August 3 coup.
But he said that while it was not his mission's function to give an opinion on the northwest African country's suspension from the AU, it was usual to maintain such sanctions until the return of democracy after transparent elections.
The AU official's remarks seemed to dash any hopes that Ould Taya might have had of securing the pan-African body's aid for a return to power, following a reversal of Washington's earlier demand that the ousted president, a strong regional ally, should be restored.
US deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Monday, "We're not insisting on a given outcome other than it be a restoration of constitutional rule, constitutional procedures and constitutional practices, consistent with international standards."
Ereli said the United States would work with the AU and others "to see that government in Mauritania is consistent with international standards and respects the will of the people and is responsive to the people."
Envoys of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA) headed by Libyan Foreign Minister Abderrahman Shalgham also met Vall in Nouakchott Tuesday.
In the first comment on the coup by the regional organisation that groups Mauritania with Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, Shalgham said that it "could not oppose the voluntary choice of the Mauritanian people."
He refused to say if the UMA recognised the new regime pending a report to the other member states.
President Abdoulaye Wade of neighbouring Senegal spoke with Vall Monday by telephone, saying he was prepared to assist in a peaceful transition to a civilian government and dispatching his foreign minister Tidiane Gadio to Nouakchott, according to the Mauritanian news agency.
Adeniji had initial talks Tuesday with Vall and Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar, a former prime minister under Ould Taya who formed a new 24-member government Wednesday at the request of the 17-man junta.
He also met leaders of political parties, businessmen and representatives of civil society.
Ould Taya for his part was settling down in his new home in Gambia, where he arrived late Tuesday from Niger, according to an airport official in Banjul.
He was believed to be heading to the Senegambia tourist resort outside the capital.
He had sought refuge in Niger in the wake of the coup that ended his two decades of iron-fisted rule while he was in Saudi Arabia for the funeral of King Fahd.
His departure from Niger came a day after he read a televised statement ordering the security forces, "as the president of the republic ... to put an end to this criminal operation in order to restore the situation to normal."
His order was totally ignored by the military and condemned by Mauritanian politicians, who called it a dangerous incitement to civil war.
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