Update Dec-25: Guinea Students welcome president Mussa Camara

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P { MARGIN: 0px 0px 5px } BODY { MARGIN: 0px } France, AU and US set to oppose rebel military

The coup leader, Captain Mussa Dadis Camara, heads the list of council members, which includes six civilians. Most of the people named as being members of the National Council for Democracy and Development are senior military officers. They include Lieutenant Colonel Sekouba Konate, who heads an elite army unit. In its takeover announcement, the plotters said elections would be held within 60 days and an interim president and prime minister would be appointed,

The head of Guinea's army has said that plotters trying to launch a coup after the death of President Lansana Conte do not represent most troops.

But they appeared less than an hour after Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare announced in a state broadcast that he was inside his office and that his government had not been dissolved.

Two tanks were parked near the compound and a third was circulating through the capital. A fourth was parked at the headquarters of state-run radio and TV, where transmissions had been cut.

Within hours of the death of the authoritarian President Lansana Conté, a hitherto unknown military-led group said it seized power in the West African state of Guinea on Tuesday, suspending the Constitution and government, according to news reports.

A uniformed army officer said on state television and radio that a group calling itself the National Council for Democracy and Development was “taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people,” the reports said.

“The constitution is dissolved,” the officer was quoted as saying. “The government is dissolved. The institutions of the republic are dissolved.”

The apparent coup mirrored Mr. Conté’s own rise to power in a military takeover in 1984, following the death of his predecessor, Ahmed Sekou Toure. Mr. Sekou Toure had ruled with an iron fist since the country’s independence in 1958.

A compter d'aujourd'hui, la Constitution est suspendue, ainsi que toute activité politique et syndicale", a déclaré le capitaine Moussa Dadis Camara, lisant un communiqué sur les ondes de Radio Conakry.

The death of Conte, a diabetic, chain-smoking general, left a power vacuum in the bauxite exporter, where companies like Alcoa, Rio Tinto Alcan and Russia's RUSAL have major operations

"There is an attempted coup d'etat," National Assembly President Aboubacar Sompare, who under the constitution should take over as interim head of state, told French TV station France 24.

Former colonial power France said it would oppose any coup in Guinea. "We will not be content with a situation that does not respect the constitutional order," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier told a news conference.