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Region to Send in Troops if Gambia President Won't Step Down

by Associated Press

   LAGOS, NIGERIA --

   West African leaders will send troops into Gambia if its longtime ruler
   who lost elections does not step down next month, the president of the
   Economic Community of West African States said Friday.

   Marcel de Souza told reporters that the regional bloc has chosen
   Senegal to lead any military intervention if President Yahya Jammeh
   does not hand over power.

   "The deadline is Jan. 19 when the mandate of Jammeh ends," de Souza
   said. "If he doesn't go, we have a force that is already on alert, and
   this force will intervene to restore the will of the people."

   This would not be the first time the bloc has intervened in a regional
   crisis.

   De Souza spoke to reporters in Bamako, Mali, even as ECOWAS continues
   to use diplomacy to get Jammeh to accept his Dec. 1 defeat.

   Jammeh at first shocked Gambians by accepting defeat but announced a
   week later he had changed his mind. He says irregularities in the vote
   count made him question the win of Adama Barrow, a little-known
   businessman who was the opposition coalition candidate.

   Troops seized the office of Gambia's electoral commission after
   Jammeh's later announcement, and he has mobilized troops across the
   tiny country that is almost completely surrounded by Senegal.

   The U.N. Security Council this week urged Gambian security forces to
   "demonstrate maximum restraint" and again urged Jammeh to accept
   defeat.

   The U. N. high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein,
   called the troop deployment "deeply worrying, given the record of human
   rights violations in Gambia, including excessive use of force against
   demonstrators, arbitrary detention and deaths in custody, as well as
   allegations of torture and ill-treatment of detainees."

   Jammeh took power in a coup 22 years ago.