Guinea’s deputy junta chief pledged on Wednesday to pave the way for a return to civilian rule and announced that military leader Moussa Dadis Camara would need time to recover after an assassination attempt.

The comments by Sekouba Konate on state television were the clearest signal yet that Camara’s political future was in doubt after a December 3 gun attack, and offered a possible way out of the deepening crisis in the unstable West African state, the world’s top exporter of the aluminium ore bauxite.

“His life is not in danger but it will need time and patience, and medical attention for some time for him to recover fully,” said Mr Konate, who is also defence minister. “We need to act to restore peace and the unity of all Guineans, and to put our state and political system on a new foundation,” he said, promising to accept a prime minister drawn from the opposition as part of national unity government.

Mr Camara, who took power in a bloodless coup in December 2008 after the death of President Lansana Conte, has not been seen in public for more than a month since he was evacuated for treatment in Morocco following the December 3 assassination bid by an ex-aide.

The Moroccan Foreign Ministry welcomed Konate’s comments and revealed that Camara has been in intensive care.

Pleased by the decision

“The Kingdom of Morocco … which has received President Dadis Camara for intensive care, is pleased by the decision announced today by the Acting President General Sekouba Konate to immediately name a prime minister from the political forces to lead a transition government of national unity,” it said.

Western diplomats in Rabat said they believed Morocco had joined hands with Paris and Washington to keep Camara away from Guinea and bolster efforts in Conakry to return the country to a civilian government in his absence.

Camara and his junta allies became the subject of international outrage and sanctions after security forces killed more than 150 people and raped scores of women protesting in a Conakry stadium on September 28.

LONDON, Thursday

A BBC investigation has cast doubt on key evidence in the case against the Libyan convicted of blowing up a US jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, the broadcaster said ON Wednesday.

A tiny fragment of the timer allegedly used to blow up Pan Am flight 103 — crucial in linking Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi to the bomb — was not properly tested and was also unlikely to have survived the explosion, it said.

Mr Megrahi was jailed in 2001 for the attack which left 270 people dead, but was controversially released from his Scottish prison in August 2009 because he was suffering from terminal cancer and only had months to live.

Investigators believe the plane bomb was contained in a Toshiba radio cassette player inside a brown suitcase with various items of clothing, and was triggered by a digital timer that was later linked to Libya.

But according to the BBC’s Newsnight programme, the fragment of the timer — found embedded in a charred piece of clothing three weeks after the bombing — was never tested to confirm if it had actually been in a blast.

The BBC also quoted an explosives expert, John Wyatt, who recreated the suitcase bomb 20 times and found that each time, the timer and its circuit board were completely destroyed — casting serious doubt on the fragment found.

“I do find it quite it extraordinary and I think highly improbable and most unlikely that you would find a fragment like that — it is unbelievable,” Wyatt, the UN’s explosives consultant for Europe, told the programme.

It is not the first time doubts have been raised about the timer fragment — in 1995, a British lawmaker suggested it could have been planted by the CIA.

A review by the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission also cast doubt on evidence linking Megrahi to the clothes in the suitcase and concluded in 2007 that “a miscarriage of justice may have occurred”.