20100109

CONAKRY (Reuters) - Guinea's caretaker leader, Sekouba Konate, is in good health, an official of the ruling junta said on Friday, denying media reports he was being evacuated to Senegal for hospital treatment.

Konate, the army officer running Guinea since junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara was wounded in a failed December 3 assassination attempt, is seen as key to efforts to ending a crisis in the West African nation that threatens the stability of the region.

Earlier, Senegal's APS news agency said Senegal had sent an aircraft to Guinea to fetch Konate and separate media reports said the general needed treatment for an unspecified ailment.

"The current acting president Sekouba Konate is not ill, he is in good health. No evacuation to Senegal is planned," Health Minister Abdoulaye Sherif Diaby told France 24 television.

"Perhaps (Konate) will head to Dakar for consultations with President (Abdoulaye) Wade but it is not a health problem."

The junta later issued a statement confirming that Konate was in Guinea and state television showed pictures of him in uniform next to the official who read out the statement.

"In any case, any trip by General Konate will be the subject of an official announcement," said the statement.

Camara took power in Guinea after a December 2008 coup. Before being wounded in a gun attack by his former aide de camp, he had broken promises to hold early elections and was internationally reviled for a security crackdown on pro-democracy marchers in September in which over 150 people were killed.