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- WORLD, Page 53World NotesTOGOHigh Noon In Lome
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- An interim government led by Prime Minister Kokou Koffigoh
- was put in power by a national convention in Togo three months
- ago, consigning President Gnassingbe Eyadema to figurehead status
- after a reign of 24 years. Last week, after Koffigoh announced
- the banning of Eyadema's Togolese People's Assembly party,
- rebellious troops surrounded the Prime Minister's residence and
- demanded Koffigoh's resignation. At one point, they threatened
- to reduce Lome to rubble and to starve out the Prime Minister.
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- More than a dozen civilians were killed when troops fired
- on demonstrators protesting the coup attempt. France,
- ostensibly to protect its citizens in what was once its colony,
- moved to intervene. Paris ordered some 300 soldiers stationed
- in other former colonies in Africa to stand by in neighboring
- Benin, a half-hour flight from Lome. From the outset of the
- crisis, Eyadema urged the rebels to call off their siege, and
- at week's end they complied. The troops pulled back from
- Koffigoh's home and other strategic points and returned to their
- barracks. The withdrawal apparently ended the third coup attempt
- in the past two months by soldiers said to be loyal to Eyadema.
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