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Thomas Thabane says he will return to Lesotho<\/p>\n
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A demonstration by opponents of Lesotho Prime Minister Thomas Thabane has been called off after he fled on Saturday, saying the military wanted to oust him.<\/p>\n
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The army has denied staging a coup and says it has returned to barracks.<\/p>\n
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A military spokesman said it had disarmed the police forces because they were planning to arm “fanatics” in Monday’s march.<\/p>\n
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Mr Thabane fled to regional power South Africa, which held emergency talks on the situation on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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There is no news of what emerged from the talks between Mr Thabane, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma and other regional leaders.<\/p>\n
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Lesotho, which is entirely surrounded by South Africa, has experienced several military takeovers since independence in 1966.<\/p>\n
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Lesotho is a largely rural country dominated by mountains and surrounded on all sides by South Africa<\/span>
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Mr Thabane told the BBC he would return from South Africa “as soon as I know I am not going to get killed”.<\/p>\n
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Reports say the capital, Maseru, is now calm.<\/p>\n
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One police officer was killed and four wounded after the military intervened, police say.<\/p>\n
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Mr Thabane has headed a unity government since elections in May 2012, but suspended parliament sessions in June amid feuding in his coalition.<\/p>\n
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Mr Thabane said the army had rendered the government “dysfunctional”, an action that amounted to a coup.<\/p>\n
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South Africa’s government on Saturday described the situation as “worrying”, with spokesman Clayson Monyela saying the country would not tolerate “unconstitutional change of government”.<\/p>\n
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The army is understood to have acted after the prime minister attempted to remove its chief, Lt Gen Kennedy Tlai Kamoli.<\/p>\n
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The army said the general was still in charge, saying the military “supports the democratically elected government of the day,” Reuters news agency reported.<\/p>\n
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Thomas Thabane says …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}