BISSAU, Nov 18 (AFP) - Guinea Bissau's new Prime Minister Pedro Pires
announced his cabinet Monday, bringing in new faces to take over the
ministries of foreign affairs and defence.
   The new 20-member team is five fewer than in the previous government,
which was dismissed by President Kumba Yala on Friday for incompetence.
   It is dominated by members of Yala's ruling Social Renovation Party
(PRS).
   There are 12 new faces in the cabinet, which includes three women.
   Among the most notable appointments is that of Zamora Induta to head the
defence ministry. Induta is a former spokesman for the former military
regime of General Ansumane Mane.
   The foreign ministry was handed to newcomer Joazinho Vieira Co, formerly
the country's ambassador to Lisbon.
   Antonio Sedja Mam was named interior minister, a post he held on an
interim basis in the previous administration.
   Yala said he had dismissed the government of prime minister Alamara
Nhassehad because of the Portugese-speaking nation's current economic
crisis, just a day after the president publicly accused the government of
incompetence.
   The president, who came to power in January 2000, said fresh
parliamentary elections would be held within 90 days.
   An economist by training, Pires is Yala's own former chief of staff and
a founder member of the PRS.
   The PRS, which won 37 of the 100 seats in the single-chamber parliament
in 1999, has been riven with dissent for months. The next elections had not
been due until the end of next year until Yala brought the poll forward.
   A crisis among members of the ruling elite became apparent in August
with tension notably between Yala and Nhasse, both members of the PRS.

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