Nkrumah In Guinea; ‘I Will Return'

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31000, 4 March 1966, Page 13

Nkrumah In Guinea; ‘I Will Return '

(N.Z.P.A. Reuter—Copyright)

DAKAR, March 3. A hero s welcome greeted Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the deposed President of Ghana, back on West African soil in Guinea within a week of the Army coup that toppled him from power. He declared to a frenzied, cheering crowd in Conakry 7, the Guinea capital, yesterday: “I am on mv wav back to Ghana.”

With Guinea’s President, Sekou Toure, a close friend, Dr. Nkrumah made a lap of honour round Conakry stadium before the biggest mass rally ever staged there, according to Radio Guinea.

Speaking in the vernacular, the Guinea leader whipped his massive audience into wild emotion with an impassioned greeting for the deposed Ghanaian President. Earlier, a 21-gun salute boomed out as Dr. Nkrumah flew in from Moscow to end a week of speculation on his movements and plans.

I Dr. Nkrumah’s pledge to return to the country he ruled 'for nine years defies a threat by the new regime to put him

j on trial. I His immediate plans are still unclear, but observers in Dakar note that Conakry and Bamako—capital of Guinea’s northern neighbour, Mali—are the nearest points to Accra where Dr. Nkrumah can depend on support for any attempt to assert his claim as constitutional head of Ghana. As the guest of President Toure, he is with his closest illy. The two statesmen

formed a Ghana-Guinea union in 1958, although their paperplans have never been implemented.

In Cairo. Madame Fathia Nkrumah, the w’ife of the deposed President, was quoted by the newspaper “Al Ahram” as saying she was ready to “join her husband anywhere to be at his side in his present troubles.” At times almost inaudible from emotion, Dr. Nkrumah told the crowd at Conakry stadium: “I have come here purposely to use Guinea as a platform to tell the world that very soon I shall be in Accra, in Ghana. “I am not going to say anything against anyone, be(cause I understand perfectly [well the factors at work in [the world today. “Not Surprised” “What has happened in Algeria, where President Ahmed Ben Bella was overthrown last June, has happened in Ghana. We are not surprised . . . we understand the problems. “All we have to do is to stand firm, and see how we can counteract these factors.” Dr. Nkrumah said he heard

.news of the coup when he j [reached Peking last Thursday on his way to peace talks— 1 later cancelled—with the i North Vietnamese leaders in Hanoi. “If those who were out to govern Accra were men, why did thev not do this in mv

presence. Why did they let me leave and then do it behind me . . . because they dare not if I was there,” he declared. To a burst of applause he added: “And you will see when I get there, everybody will stop.”