20101205
reuters

CONAKRY (Reuters) - Guinea will form a truth and reconciliation commission aimed at healing the wounds of ethnic and political violence that has plagued the West African country for decades, President-elect Alpha Conde said on Saturday.

The move will be modelled on South Africa's post-apartheid commission formed by Nelson Mandela and is likely to be well received by human rights groups which have condemned the country's repeated spasms of violence.

This is "so that those who have made mistakes can ask forgiveness and that victims can accept this forgiveness", Conde said on state television, days after Guinea's Supreme Court validated his win in a hotly contested November 7 poll in which voters largely followed ethnic lines.

"I know that forgiveness does not replace the dead or the arms that were chopped off, but it's an important step."

Conde, winner of Guinea's first free election since independence from France in 1958, said reconciliation was critical to rebuilding the poor and unstable country.

Guinea, the world's top exporter of the aluminium ore bauxite, has seen numerous bouts of violence over past decades. At least 10 people died in election clashes last month.

Among the most grim examples, former dictator and first post-independence leader Sekou Toure's Camp Boiro still stands in the capital Conakry. Rights group Amnesty International says more that 50,000 political detainees died in horrendous conditions in the prison, now a military camp.