Protesting Guinea soldiers riot, loot in barracks

CONAKRY, May 3 (Reuters) Soldiers in Guinea demanding higher pay grades fired into the air and ransacked arms and food stores in an overnight protest at two of the West African country's biggest military barracks, officials said today.

No casualties were immediately reported and negotiations were underway today to resolve the dispute.

But the incidents in the capital Conakry and the mining town of Kindia posed a challenge to the authority of Guinea's new government, which was formed in the wake of violent strikes that rocked the world's top bauxite exporter in January and February.

Guinean security forces have been sharply criticised by human rights groups which accuse them of murdering, robbing and raping civilians during the military crackdown that quelled the strike protests in the former French colony.

The government says 137 people were killed and 1,667 injured in the January and February violence, which was triggered by strikes led by union leaders who said President Lansana Conte, a reclusive diabetic in his 70s, was unfit to govern.

Conte has relied on the armed forces to bolster his autocratic rule since seizing power in a 1984 coup. In a 1996 mutiny, soldiers used heavy weaponry to bombard the presidential palace to demand higher wages and some diplomats question how long the army, riven by generational and ethnic divisions, will remain loyal to Conte.

Witnesses and military officers said soldiers at the Keme Bourema barracks at Kindia, 135 km (84 miles) northeast of Conakry, went on the rampage yesterday night, looting the home of armed forces chief of staff Kerfalla Camara.

Shooting into the air was also reported during much of the night at the Alpha Yaya Diallo barracks in Conakry.

The protesting soldiers demanded a permanent increase in their pay grades and the retroactive payment of a hefty salary increase they had received in March.

''The private home of Kerfalla Camara has been completely ransacked. The store containing weapons and military uniforms was emptied. The rice store was also pillaged,'' an officer at the Kindia barracks, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

''The situation is serious and a solution must be found,'' another senior officer said.

Analysts saw the army protests posing a problem for the government of consensus Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate, who was appointed by Conte in a deal with unions to end the strikes.

''For decades, the Guinean army has viewed itself as beyond reproach for its often abusive, irresponsible and criminal behaviour,'' said Corinne Dufka, a senior researcher on West Africa for Human Rights Watch.

''The ability to bring them under control, to get them to be protectors instead of perpetrators will be a crucial test for this government,'' she told Reuters.

In a report last month, Human Rights Watch accused the security forces of employing ''a brutal crackdown'' to quell the protests earlier this year and said the possibility of renewed unrest and repression remained very real.

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