Fugitive Ivory Coast junta member denies plot against Guei

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (Reuters) -- A fugitive former member of Ivory Coast's ruling military junta spoke out on Wednesday, denying accusations that he was behind an assassination attempt on the junta's leader, Gen. Robert Guei.

"This is a ridiculous set-up," Abdoulaye Coulibaly told BBC's French language radio. "I am surprised, and it fills me with indignation."

"He (Guei) has accused me, but he knows full well that we would never have done that, because he knows me and we have a good relationship," he said.

A junta statement said on Tuesday that Gen. Lassana Palenfo and Coulibaly, who were respectively number two and three in the junta, had fled after being implicated in an alleged plot to kill Guei.

A junta source said they had taken refuge at an African embassy in the main city, Abidjan.

State television said weapons had been found during a search at Coulibaly's house on Tuesday.

"I think that they certainly want to arrest us. We are going to take precautions because a price has been put on our heads and we will defend ourselves," Coulibaly said.

He declined to say where he was but said Guei knew where he and Palenfo were hiding.

Coulibaly and Palenfo, who were both dismissed from the government on Friday, were Guei's right hand men when he took power after a coup on Christmas Eve last year.

"We are brothers in arms, we worked together on December 24," Coulibaly said.

"It's true that at the end we had different points of view. ... I did not want to stay on after the transition, I have no wish to go right to the top of the state hierarchy."

At the time of the coup Guei said he was not interested in power and only wanted to "sweep the house clean," but later he announced his candidacy in a presidential election due on October 22.

The election is the first in a series of polls aimed at restoring civilian rule to the West African country.

Palenfo and Coulibaly are believed to be close to Alassane Ouattara, a former prime minister who plans to stand against Guei in the election.

Guei says his Abidjan residence was attacked by a group of young soldiers in the early hours of September 18 in a bid to kill him, but diplomats and independent media have questioned the official version of the events.

Ouattara's candidacy has been at the heart of a political crisis in Ivory Coast since before the coup.

His opponents, including ousted president Henri Konan Bedie and now Guei, say he is not Ivorian and thus ineligible to stand for president. Ouattara says he meets all the criteria laid out in a constitution adopted by a referendum in July.

The Supreme Court, headed by one of Guei's former advisers, has the final say and must rule by October 7.

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