Resignation is out of question, says Mauritanian toppled President

Mauritania's ousted president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi said he would not resign neither would he leave power because he considered himself as the “elected president of the country.”

• Abdallahi promised to do his best to serve the Mauritanian people when he comes back to power.
• “Reports from human rights activists who met me are not true at all. I have never talked to them about leaving power and I do not think my way of speaking mentioned that,” he told Echorouk in an interview.
• The Mauritanian President, who had been under house arrest in Nouakchott since military officers led by Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz toppled him in a coup on August 6, was transferred Thursday to his home town Lemden (200 km south of Nouakchott).
• Abdallahi said he did not feel bad for trying to dismiss four senior army officers, including the head of the presidential guard, Gen Ould Abdelaziz. “I just exercised my prerogatives in conformity with the constitution,” he said.
• He believes the presidential guards were ready to use weapons and enter in clashes to stay in power. Their allegations that the dismissal “decision was about to endanger civil security and lead to blood shed clearly show their position,” he said.
• “It’s me who appointed them in those positions to replace other officers and there was no problem though. So, how could troubles happen now, is it because they were fired and replaced by other officers from the same military institution?’
• While his wife Khattou Bint Boukhary is accused of corruption and illegal use of public funds, the Mauritanian president confirms that corruption has been reduced in his country.
• “I have never corrupted any state-owned or a private company neither did I accept to appoint a corruption suspect in any administration,” he stressed.
• “Khattou Bint Boukhary has not received any money from the public funds during the period I was in power,” he added.
• He described those allegations as “hopeless attempts to justify an unjustifiable military coup. “The most important thing for them is creating a crisis in the political situation of the country. They do that through an arrests campaign against a number of the coup opponents,” he said.