Benante, who met senior officers from both sides on Wednesday to discuss plans for disarmament, said loyalist forces and the rebel Military Junta had agreed to integrate their forces and maintain the military ranks held before the rebellion of 7 June 1998. Guinean and Senegalese forces backing the government will complete their withdrawal by the extended deadline of 16 March, Benante said. Portuguese aid official due in Portugal's senior aid official, Luis Amado, is scheduled to visit Guinea Bissau on Monday to discuss reconstruction of the country after the eight-month military uprising, Lusa said. Amado, the assistant secretary of state for foreign affairs and cooperation, is then expected in Togo on Tuesday. Some 195,096 voters in the former Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea go to the polls on Sunday in their second legislative elections, under the threat of a boycott by opposition political parties, AFP reported.
Members serve a five-year term and are elected by universal suffrage.
Other parties said they had been prevented from holding pre-campaign activities. Child traffickers arrested Police in Djougou, in Benin's northern Atacora District, have rescued 14 children aged between 10 and 14 from child traffickers, PANA reported today. The children, from Bassila about 400 km north of Cotonou, were in a Nigerian registered vehicle and under the supervision of four Benin adult nationals when they were stopped by police, PANA said. The children told police they were promised video tapes, cassette recorders and bicycles.