Guinea strike to end Tues after deal struck-unions

CONAKRY, Feb 25 (Reuters) A general strike in Guinea will end from Tuesday after President Lansana Conte agreed to demands to choose a new prime minister from a list proposed by opponents, union leaders said today.

The deal signalled the end of a work stoppage that has gripped the West African nation, the world's top exporter of bauxite, the ore used to make aluminium, since February 12, following an earlier strike in January.

''The strike will be lifted,'' union negotiator Ousmane Souare said after the breakthrough was announced following several days of intense negotiations brokered by West African mediators led by former Nigerian President Ibrahima Babangida.

The agreement was struck after Conte, dropping a previous refusal, agreed to pick a new premier from a list of four names drawn up by union leaders, political parties and civil society representatives.

''We're going to suspend the strike ... the return to work will be on Tuesday,'' Ibrahima Bangoura of the National Confederation of Guinean Workers (CNTG), told reporters.

The strike triggered violent clashes with security forces across the country, killing more than 120 people since it first began in January, most of them unarmed civilians.

Conte accepted the accord in a meeting late on Saturday with Babangida, who headed the mediation team from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.

The breakthrough followed the lifting of martial law at midnight on Friday after Guinea's parliament refused a request from the president to extend a state of emergency to prevent street protests.

Before Friday, martial law had been lifted on February 16 in Guinea's bauxite and alumina mining towns and facilities to allow the resumption of the country's leading export and economic lifeblood.

Sources involved in the negotiations said Conte, a reclusive diabetic in his 70s whose opponents say is unfit to rule, would announce his choice of premier from the list by March 2.

LIST OF TECHNOCRATS The names proposed for premier were Guinean technocrats, most with experience of working for international organisations.

They were: Mohamed Beavogui, who works for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a UN agency, Lansana Kouyate, a former ECOWAS executive secretary, Kabinet Komara, who works at the Cairo-based African Export-Import Bank, and Saidou Diallo, head of Guinea's National Social Security Fund.

January's strike by unions was initially suspended after Conte agreed to name a consensus prime minister. But the unions resumed the stoppage on February 12 after the president broke the deal by promoting a close ally, Eugene Camara, to be premier.

Under the new deal Camara will now be replaced.

Following the lifting of martial law, fewer soldiers and police patrolled the oceanside capital Conakry at the weekend.

The imposition of martial law, including a dusk-to-dawn curfew, had restored some order to the former French colony, keeping protesters off the streets.

But, civil rights groups have accused the security forces of shooting, raping and beating civilians during the unrest.

Union and opposition leaders were alarmed when army chief of staff, Kerfalla Camara, went on state radio and TV hours late on Friday to order an end to the labour stoppage.

REUTERS SAM RAI2353