DAKAR - The overthrow of Niger's pariah leader Mamadou Tandja has been condemned internationally as undemocratic, but it could provide the west African country with its best chance for elections. Tandja was removed on Thursday in response tension caused by changes he made to the uranium-producing country's constitution in 2009 to extend his rule, effectively delaying elections due this year by at least three years. "This is one of those cases where you ask yourself if there's such a thing as a good coup," said a regional analyst who asked not to be identified. "Though it really depends on the junta's intentions." The crisis in Niger, whose oil and mineral wealth has attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment, is one of many in a region plagued by coups and delayed elections which have proved obstacles to democratic civilian rule. Fighters from the junta, which calls itself the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy (CSRD), stormed the presidential palace on Thursday in a hail of gunfire before detaining Tandja and suspending the constitution. Two regional bodies, the African Union and ECOWAS, and Niger's former colonial ruler France, quickly condemned the coup while the United States said it could not defend Tandja's violent overthrow. "Clearly, we do not in any way, shape or form, you know, defend violence of this nature, but clearly we think this underscores that Niger needs to move ahead with the elections and the formation of a new government," U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said on Thursday.
