Gambia’s embattled dictator looked to set to finally end his 22-year grip on power on Friday night after agreeing to sign a last-minute deal to step down.
As troops from neighbouring Senegal threatened to invade, President Yahya Jammeh finally succumbed to diplomatic pressure to hand over to Adama Barrow, the candidate who defeated him at elections last month.
“I think it is not necessary that a single drop of blood be shed,” Mr Jammeh said in a brief statement on state television.
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He did not give details on any deal that was struck, and it was not immediately clear when Mr Barrow would return from neighbouring Senegal to take power.
Diplomats said a document was due to be signed on Friday night by Mr Jammeh in Banjul, the Gambian capital, where he has spent the last few days holed up with members of his dwindling inner circle.
The agreement is understood to stipulate that Mr Jammeh will hand power to Mr Barrow within the next three days.
It is thought the former strongman will then go to nearby Mauritania, although he may ultimately end up being offered asylum in Morocco. The north African kingdom has not ratified conventions on the International Criminal Court, meaning that Mr Jammeh is perhaps unlikely to be later extradited for prosecution for human rights abuses.
The agreement was struck after 11th-hour diplomacy on Friday by the leaders of Guinea and Mauritania, with Mr Jammeh being warned that the Senegalese troops could move against him within hours if he did not comply.
However, despite the apparent break-through, diplomats warned that the Senegalese troops would stay at the border in case Mr Jammeh tried to change his mind.
“The force will stay in place for the time being,” one official told The Telegraph.
The country’s entrenched strongman has resisted more than a month of increasingly forceful demands to honour his original pledge to step down after losing December’s elections.
Overnight on Thursday, he was warned that if he did not agree to step down by Friday noon, a detachment of Senegalese troops at the border would be authorised to roll into the capital, Banjul, to take him out by force.
That deadline was later extended as a final diplomatic delegation, led by the president of Guinea, Alpha Conde, and the president of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, flew in for a last-ditch session of talks on Friday lunch time.
The delegation arrived a day after the man who won December’s election, Adama Barrow, was sworn in as Gambia’s new president at the Gambian embassy in neighbouring Senegal.
On Friday night Mr Barrow tweeted “I would like to inform you that Yahya Jammeh has agreed to step down. He is scheduled to depart Gambia today.”
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