By John Zodzi
Lome - A human rights group in Togo said on Friday around 800 people were killed in unrest surrounding last month's disputed presidential election, although medical and diplomatic sources said the figure seemed exaggerated.
"Before, during and after the polls in Togo human rights were violated, human dignity was not respected, and it's the authorities who are responsible," Eklou Clumson, vice-president of Togo's Human Rights League (LTDH), told a news conference.
State radio said President Faure Gnassingbe, whose victory in the April 24 vote sparked days of protest by opposition youths and heavy-handed repression by the security forces, planned to set up an independent inquiry into the violence.
Togo slipped into chaos after Gnassingbe Eyadema, the archetypal African strongman who brooked little opposition during nearly four decades in power, died on February 5.
Gnassingbe, 39, was named president just hours later by the army, who said it feared a dangerous political vacuum, but international outrage and violent protests eventually drove him to step down and call elections.
The final results gave Gnassingbe, who has offered to form a unity government with the opposition, just over 60 percent of the vote, against 38 percent for the main opposition candidate.
The opposition said on Friday it would only consider joining a government under Gnassingbe if the victims of violence were compensated, disputed ballots were investigated and talks monitored by the international community were held to work out how a transition period could be managed.
"Only if these conditions are met can we subscribe to the idea of the formation of a government of national unity," opposition coalition leader Yawovi Agboyibo told reporters.
He said Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who chairs the African Union, had invited the opposition to a summit in Abuja next Thursday to discuss the crisis. The ruling RPT party said it had also been invited to the meeting.
The LTDH said in an 11-page report that 811 people had been killed since Eyadema's death, 790 of them during the election period, and many others had been raped during days of fighting in the capital Lome and other areas of the West African country.
It said more than 4 500 people had been injured.
"It's an overestimation. Eight hundred dead in one community would be very visible," said one independent medical source in Lome, declining to speculate on the true figure.
Western diplomats have said they believe between 100 and 150 people were killed in towns around Togo as opposition supporters demonstrated against what they said was a rigged election.
A spokesman for the main opposition coalition on Friday put the death toll at around 300, but said information on casualties was still coming in from towns outside Lome.
The United Nations has said over 23 000 people fled the country for neighbouring Benin and Ghana after the election results were announced, although it said on Tuesday that the exodus had slowed to a trickle.