Many of the colourful masks had sewn up lips and resembled more like Hannibal Lecter than haute couture.

National surveys on female genital mutilation in Haute Guinée Moyenne Guinée and in Guinée Forestière Basse Guinée, which showed that 96.4 per cent of women surveyed had undergone excision.

And it carried 56 people at the speed of a Buick at an altitude you could hear dogs bark, and it cost twice as much as a first class cabin on the Normandie to fly it.

The MASPFE therefore plans to take account of forest dwelling women in its training programme for the conservation and processing of food products, as has been done with women in Basse and Haute Guinée.

The national survey of December 2001 estimated the national prevalence of the infection at 2.8 per cent, with variations ranging from 2.1 per cent in the urban areas of Haute Guinée to 7 per cent in the urban areas of Guinée Forestière.

(b) To strengthen the transitional institutions, in particular to set up effectively the Independent Electoral Commission, and to make more effective the institutions for the strengthening of democracy, namely, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Human Rights Monitoring Centre and the Haute Autorité des Médias, and to re establish stability and the rule of law over the entire territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thereby returning peace and progress to its people