By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY (Reuters) - Mutinous Guinean soldiers launched a coup attempt on Tuesday hours after the death was announced of the West African nation's long-serving President Lansana Conte.
But the head of the army said he believed the plotters were in the minority.
The mutineers broadcast a communique on state radio suspending the constitution and the government. It was not clear how much support they had for their bid to take over the bauxite exporting country.
"I think they are in the minority ... they are not the majority in the army," Guinea's armed forces chief, General Diarra Camara, told French TV station France 24.
Officials said negotiations were held at the main Alpha Yaya Diallo military base in Conakry's suburbs, between soldiers and officers who supported the coup and those who wanted to stay loyal to constitutional procedure.
National Assembly President Aboubacar Sompare, who under the constitution should take over as interim head of state following Conte's death on Monday, told French TV an "attempted coup d'etat" was underway.
Shots were heard from the neighbourhood of the Alpha Yaya Diallo camp, residents said. But despite the presence of heavily-armed military patrols, and at least one tank in the streets, the dilapidated seaside capital Conakry was calm.
"I don't think all of the army are behind the mutineers ... It's a group," Sompare told France 24, speaking from his home in the capital Conakry.
The attempted coup was launched just hours after government leaders said Conte, believed to be 74, had died from illness following nearly a quarter century of rule over the country, the world's leading exporter of bauxite aluminium ore.
In radio broadcasts, the soldiers attempting the coup told government leaders to go to the Alpha Yaya Diallo camp "for their protection," but Sompare said he and Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare were still at liberty.
Former colonial power France, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, said it would oppose any coup in Guinea, a position echoed by the African Union and the West African regional bloc ECOWAS.
Heavily-armed soldiers guarded the strategic road bridge giving access to downtown Conakry, the presidency and the central bank, and also patrolled the streets in pick-up trucks.
As the military vehicles passed, some civilians applauded, chanting "president, president."
In an earlier broadcast on state radio announcing the suspension of the constitution, one of the coup-plotters, Captain Moussa Davis Camara, said a National Council for Democracy and Development was taking over.
NATION "ON THE PRECIPICE"
The broadcast cited what it called widespread corruption and a "catastrophic economic situation" to justify the dissolving of the government, which it said was largely responsible for this.
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.
"Guinea hangs on the precipice. There is no democratic transition to now speak of," Kissy Agyeman, Africa analyst with IHS Global Insight, said in a briefing note.
Guinea, most of whose people are poor, has experienced anti-government riots and strikes and bloody military mutinies in recent years, aggravated by rising prices of food and fuel.
Appearing on TV in the early hours of Tuesday with other government and military leaders, Sompare had announced Conte had died on Monday evening. He asked the country's Supreme Court to name him president in line with the constitution, in order to organise presidential elections within 60 days.
Legislative elections were already planned for 2009.
Sompare declared 40 days of national mourning.
Rumours that Conte was seriously ill had circulated for days. Conte, who said he was born around 1934, had governed Guinea since 1984 when he seized power after the country's first president, Sekou Toure, died in a U.S. hospital.
But the president, for whom the military was a key pillar of support, never groomed a clear successor.
"The military obeyed Conte ... and now he's not there," one veteran local journalist told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Disgruntled younger soldiers from the Alpha Yaya Diallo base had staged a previous mutiny over pay earlier this year.
Conte became reclusive in his later years of rule and often travelled abroad for medical treatment.
Veteran opposition leader Jean Marie Dore of the Union for the Progress of Guinea party said: "It is essential that the institutions function correctly and that the provisions of the constitution be respected."
Last year, a general strike triggered anti-government riots in which more than 180 people were killed, most of them shot by Conte's forces, according to witnesses and human rights groups.
Analysts saw little impact on mining operations. "If you look at the history of Guinea and Guinea mining ... they have continued to mine, so the base assumption would be nothing really changes in the short term," said Julian Kettle, aluminium research manager at U.K.-based industry consultants Brook Hunt.
