ZIGUINCHOR, 15 January (IRIN) - With the death on Sunday of Augustine Diamacoune Senghor, a Roman Catholic priest who lead a separatist movement in the southern Casamance region of Senegal, mediators and experts on the conflict have diverging opinions about how it may effect the on-going peace process.

"The disappearance of Diamacoune could create problems in resolving the Casamance conflict," said Landing Savané, Senegal's minister of state and head of the ruling party of President Abdulaye Wade.

But for Vincent Foucher, a long time researcher on the Casamance conflict at the Sciences Po University Centre for Black African Studies in France, "There will probably be some battles over leadership within the political wing but, as the politicians have no direct control over the guerrillas, this might not mean more guerrilla violence."

Diamacoune, the 67 year-old founder of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) rebel movement, had been ailing for months. He died in Val de Grace, a military hospital in Paris.

Born in Casamance, a tropical southern province of Senegal, Diamacoune was a former director of a Catholic seminary who spent decades calling for his region's independence, not from Senegal but from France.

Citing arcane administrative documents as proof that Senegal's former colonial power had never made Casamance part of Senegal, Diamacoune claimed the post-colonial government in the capital Dakar did not have jurisdiction over the region.

From 1982, an armed wing of the MFDC waged a low-level armed struggle, but Diamacoune himself never advocated violence. Still, he was jailed twice for his views, once from 1982-1987, and again from 1990-1991, and was then placed under what he called house arrest.

In 2004, Diamacoune signed a peace agreement with the Senegalese government which was followed by a period of calm. Violence erupted again in northern Casamance between different armed factions of the movement in 2005. A new offensive by the Senegalese army in 2006 scattered thousands of civilians throughout the region, including over 5,000 into The Gambia.

Diamacoune could not be held responsibility for the violence, said Martin Evans, a geographer from University of Leicester who has studied the conflict. "He was long acknowledged as leader by most of the MFDC in the sense that they claimed allegiance to him, but in reality his control over the actions of the maquis [guerrilla fighters] has been very limited," he said.

"That is one reason why [President] Wade has opted to have his emissaries deal directly with maquis commanders where possible," he said.

That is not the point of view of the mayor of Ziguinchor Robery Sahne. "Whatever people say, all the factions of the MFDC recognized him… which is why now, without him, negotiations will become difficult."

md/dh/nr

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