Mauritania Junta steps down

This is the story from back in August, 2008, of the coup d'etat against the elected government of Mauritania (as covered on CompHyp at the time).

It appears, from reports by the AP, that the junta has stepped down to fulfill the constitutional requirements that would allow the Generals to run in the announced June, 2009, election. General M.O.A. Aziz, who was the coup leader, is certainly to be a candidate. No word on whether the former President, S.O.C. Abdallahi, will run again... He has been released from detention by the Junta, so it is possible.

For now, the nation is administered by an interim government under Senate President Ba Mamadou Mbare.

No word yet from the African Union as to whether this will cause them to put aside the sanctions imposed against the Junta.

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Footnote: B.M. Mbare is of Sub-Saharan ancestry, and is the first leader of Mauritania of that background. This is notable in that people of that ethnicity are often indentured in Mauritania to families of North African Arab ethnicity. The Associated Press did get the details right, but insisted on using "black" to identify the difference. Such is an oversimplification, esp. when dealing with the complexities of ethnicity in the Maghreb.