Our enemies 'never sleep' says E. Guinea's Obiang

BATA, Equatorial Guinea (AFP) - Europe wants to re-colonise Equatorial Guinea and the oil-rich nation has enemies that "never sleep," President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, tagged by rights group as a ruthless dictator, said Thursday.

Obiang who took power in 1979 after having the former president, also his tribal uncle, executed, is now Africa's longest serving leader.

He charged Europe with having renewed colonial ambitions during a meeting of his ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE).

"Equatorial Guinea is not dependent on anyone. We are an independent country... Europe owes a lot to Africa and its for this reason that they want to create a new recolonisation," he said at the meeting in the coastal town of Bata.

"The enemies of Guinea never sleep," he asserted, before trumpeting his parties successes, listing hospital, school and road construction.

Some 15,000 people were expected at the ruling party meet, including the first son Teodorin Obiang, the party's vice president, wanted by French prosecutors over corruption allegations.

Prosecutors in Paris earlier this month called for an international arrest warrant against Teordorin following charges brought by Transparency International, which claimed the first son was lavishly spending public funds in France.

His father Teodoro, 69, heads sub-Saharan Africa's third oil producer. He has never scored less than 95 percent in elections slammed as flawed since introducing multi-partyism in 1991.

Rights groups continue to condemn serious abuses and point out that most Equatorial Guineans live in squalor when oil revenue has given the country one of the world's highest GDP per capita ratios.