Maputo — Heads of state of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) decided in Maputo on Thursday night that Madagascar will remain suspended from all SADC bodies and activities until the restoration of constitutional order.

The summit of the SADC "double troika" followed a few hours after the investiture of Mozambican President Armando Guebuza for his second term of office.

Guebuza opened the summit, in his capacity as current head of the SADC organ on political, defence and security cooperation. It was also attended by Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who is the current SADC chairperson, the Presidents of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, of Zambia, Rupiah Banda, of Namibia, Hifikepunye Pohamba, and the Prime Minister of Swaziland, Barnabas Dlamini. Other SADC member states were represented at ministerial and ambassadorial level

At the end of the closed door meeting, Kabila declared that SADC still has several diplomatic options to solve the crisis in Madagascar, where the democratically elected president, Marc Ravalomanana, was overthrown by the mayor of Antananarivo, Andry Rajoelina, in a military coup last March.

Kabila said that SADC's preferred option is dialogue to seek a definitive way out of the crisis. He restated the regional organisation's confidence in the chief mediator, former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano Last year, Rajoelina appeared to be cooperating with plans to set up a transitional government ahead of new elections in Madgascar - but he then refused to attend the key meeting in Maputo in December to divide ministerial portfolios between the four Madagascan political factions (led by Rajoelina, Ravalomanana and two previous heads of state, Didier Ratsiraka and Alfred Zafy).

Rajoelina has subsequently torn up the agreements reached in earlier meetings in Maputo and Addis Ababa, and unilaterally appointed a new prime minister.

The final statement from the Thursday, read out by SADC Executive Secretary Tomas Salomao, warned that Madagascar remains excluded from all SADC institutions, until constitutional normality is restored. SADC urged the African Union, the United Nations and all other international bodies to take the same tough stance against the coup regime

The summit, Salomao stressed, rejected any attempt to use democratic procedures to legitimize governments which had taken power through anti-constitutional means.

It thus rejected Rajoelina's attempts to organise a transition on his own terms and hold parliamentary elections in March. SADC urged the international community to have nothing to do with these phoney elections.

The only viable plan, the statement added, was implementation of the Maputo and Addis Ababa agreements which would ensure "an inclusive, neutral and transparent" transition in Madagascar.

These agreements should be speedily implemented, the summit said, thus guaranteeing the return to constitutional rule.

The summit also urged Chissano to continue his efforts to ensure an "inclusive, transparent and credible dialogue" between the Madagascan factions.

On Zimbabwe, the summit merely "noted with appreciation the efforts made by the SADC Facilitator (Zuma)" to help the Zimbabwean parties implement to the full the Global Political Agreement reached between Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the two factions of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). It urged the parties "to implement the decisions taken".