Africa's leaders, some of whom seized power in coups themselves, have decided at their OAU summit to ostracise any future African leader who takes power by force, an OAU spokesman said yesterday.
A spokesman for the host nation, Algeria, said that the plan was for the OAU to follow the sports world in introducing a system of political red and yellow cards for any leader who failed to respect the principle that power can only change hands through the ballot box.
But the measures, adopted by the leaders meeting in closed session, will not apply to the current summit, which is being attended by the governments of Guinea-Bissau and Niger, whose elected presidents were toppled by force earlier in the year.
"If we have a meeting tomorrow and there's a coup d'etat somewhere [there's] no way for the leader of that coup to sit with us or to come to us or to be received by us. Finished. The position is now very clear," the OAU spokesman, Mr Ibrahim Daggash, told a news conference.
Mr Daggash said that future coup leaders would be shunned. "There will be no dealing with them. There will be diplomatic isolation as well. There are sanctions that can be put on them as well," he added.
The Algerian spokesman, Mr Boualem Bessaieh, told reporters: "It is no longer acceptable for African leaders to come to power by any other means than elections." He likened the planned OAU response to red and yellow cards in soccer. But he cautioned against what he called imported models for democracy.