The Benin Defence Minister, Pierre Otcho, has promised an inquiry after soldiers who served in the regional peace-keeping force in Guinea Bissau complained that they had not received all their pay and allowances.

The minister said that as far as he knew, the soldiers had received all their money, but it was possible that some of it might have gone astray.

The ousting of President Henri Konan Bedie in the Ivory Coast began with similar complaints by former peacekeepers, and the authorities in Mali acknowledged last week that they had since intervened to prevent a mutiny by former peacekeeping troops on the same grounds.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service