BISSAU, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Guinea-Bissau has charged former prime minister Carlos Gomes Junior, head of the West African country's largest party, with false testimony and slandering the head of state, the justice ministry said on Thursday.

It is 11 months since Gomes Junior, leader of the PAIGC party, accused his political opponent, President Joao Bernardo Vieira, of involvement in the murder of ex-navy chief Mohamed Lamine Sanha in January. An investigating judge said in a statement that Gomes Junior had produced no proof to back his allegation, made in an interview with Portuguese state news agency Lusa, that Vieira had approved the shooting of his military rival.

Gomes Junior spent nearly three weeks in hiding in the United Nations' Bissau headquarters in January after a warrant was issued for his arrest. He said he had been misquoted.

Sanha was a close ally of a former army chief who overthrew Vieira's previous government in a 1998-1999 civil war. Gomes Junior tried to ban Vieira from returning to compete in 2005 presidential elections, when he ran as an independent.

After winning the presidency, Vieira swiftly dismissed Gomes Junior as prime minister and ejected the PAIGC from the ruling coalition of the impoverished former Portugese colony, even though it had won legislative polls in March 2004.

The PAIGC signed a pact in March with the smaller PRS and PUSD to form a national unity government to help Vieira's government cope with a severe economic crisis and a flood of international drug trafficking.

Vieira's supporters announced last week they were forming a new party to support his candidacy before elections due next year. Since independence from Portugal in 1974, Guinea-Bissau has been rocked by instability, coups and civil war. (Reporting by Alberto Dabo, writing by Daniel Flynn, editing by Tim Pearce)

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