Deposed Malagasy president Marc Ravalomanana has accused an international contact group trying to mediate an end to the country's constitutional crisis of failing to respect a "spirit of neutrality and consensus."
Ravalomanana made the accusation in a letter to the president of the African Union Commission, Jean Ping, after his party said it would not sign an accord reached in Antananarivo last week on the makeup of an interim government to lead the country to fresh elections.
The accord confirmed former Antananarivo mayor Andry Rajoelina, who seized power with the backing of the military in March, as president of the transitional adminstration.
It distributed other key posts among Madagascar's four main political parties, but angered Ravalomanana's party by not explicitly barring Rajoelina from standing in a new presidential election.
After Rajoelina took power and expelled Ravalomanana, the Southern African Development Community and the African Union (AU) condemned Rajoelina's action as unconstitutional, refused to recognise his government and set up a mediation to return the country to constitutional rule.
In August, talks in Maputo, Mozambique produced an agreement on the principle of a transitional adminstration pending new elections to be held within 15 months. But the talks stalled on the issue of the composition of the administration.
The deadlock appeared to have been broken at the talks in Antananarivo last Tuesday - which Ravalomanana, who has been based in South Africa since he was deposed - did not attend.
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But on Wednesday, the day the AU announced an agreement, Ravalomanana said in a telephoned message to his supporters that he would not sign it.
He followed this up with a letter to Ping, dated Friday, saying that his movement "has always rejected the appointment of a coup plotter to lead the country."
The way in which the talks in Antananarivo were held was "in contradiction with the spirit of" the Maputo agreement, Ravalomanana claimed.
"Only chiefs of delegation were given the floor, and some [party] leaders were absent while such important decisions were discussed. The so-called appointment of Andry Rajoelina as president of the transition was imposed from the start wihout any discussion without any discussion between the four [party] leaders about this subject," he added.
Ravalomanana charged the international contact group with not respecting "the values it upholds" and demanded that leaders of all four parties be present at future talks, as had happened in Maputo.
