By Saliou Samb
CONAKRY (Reuters) - Guineans paid tribute to long-time ruler Lansana Conte Friday and the military junta which seized power after his death appealed for international support to lead the country to elections in two years.
Four days after Conte died in the West African country, leaving a power vacuum that led to a coup by young officers, tens of thousands of Guineans and regional leaders paid their respects to the dead president in a national funeral.
Conte's coffin, draped in a red, yellow and green national flag, was first displayed in the People Palace's in the capital Conakry, where the presidents of neighbouring Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast attended a formal ceremony.
It was then taken to a packed national stadium, where members of the junta that staged the coup were acclaimed by the crowds, who included women mourners dressed in white.
The body was due to be transported later to Conte's northwest hometown of Moussayah, where he was born around 1934. The diabetic chain-smoking general had ruled the former French colony with an iron fist since he seized power in 1984.
While some former army comrades paid tribute, ordinary Guineans hoped his passing and the new military rulers could usher in a better future. Even though Guinea is the world's top exporter of aluminium ore bauxite, most Guineans are poor.
"These people who have come in, and the ideas they express, give us some reassurance. I hope they don't change," said housewife Mariama Mara, recalling that Conte had also started as a reformer before turning into an autocratic, capricious ruler.
As Conte was being buried, the coup junta led by its appointed president, Capt. Moussa Dadis Camara, moved to shore up its support internally and to try to win international backing for the latest coup in West Africa.
It has promised to stamp out nepotism and graft, hold elections in 2010 and improve living standards.
"Now we need to be supported by the World Bank and by these kinds of institutions, so we can have the financial conditions to carry out this mission," the vice-president of the junta, General Mamadouba Toto Camara, told reporters.
The United States, the African Union and the European Union have all condemned the coup, which has again battered democratic rule in Africa, already tarnished by post-election crises in Kenya and Zimbabwe and an August coup in Mauritania.
BREAK WITH PAST
The coup leaders said they wanted to make a clean break with the quarter century of rule by Conte, which concentrated power in the hands of a small political, military and business elite.
Junta leader Camara, a little-known captain in the army supply corps, was hailed as a hero in Conakry after the coup. Even opposition parties have cautiously welcomed the military takeover, but have called for earlier elections, in 2009.
Deposed Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare endorsed the coup Thursday, reversing his initial opposition, and junta's No. 2 Camara said members of the former government could join the new administration.
"We don't reject anyone ... but what we are going to end in this country from now on is graft and impunity," he said.
Older, senior military officers who were not part of the coup, such as armed forces chief of staff General Diarra Camara, have also now rallied behind it.
Earlier, junta president Capt. Camara told France 24 TV he had no intention of clinging to power. "The future of our country is peace, freedom, reconciliation," he said, adding he would not stand in the planned election.
The last two years of Conte's rule were marked by bloody anti-government strikes, riots and army and police mutinies. There have been street protests over high food and fuel prices.
The United States said the military in Guinea must work with civilian leaders to restore civilian rule quickly.
"The United States condemns the military coup... We reject the announcement by elements of the Guinean military that elections will not be held for two years and we call for an immediate return to civilian rule," said a U.S. statement.
Mining operations have not been affected by the coup.
International companies including Rio Tinto, Alcoa and United Company Rusal mine in Guinea for bauxite.
