President Sankara of Burkina Faso Ousted

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast--A group led by President Thomas Sankara's chief adviser declared him a "a traitor to the revolution" yesterday and seized the government, the West African nation's official radio announced.

It was the fifth coup since Burkina Faso, formerly called Upper Volta, became independent of France in 1960.

Sankara, an army captain, overthrew Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo on Aug. 4, 1983, with the help of Capt. Blaise Compaore, who led the coup yesterday.

The "Popular Front of the 15th of October" seized the government to "halt the restoration of neo-colonialism being undertaken by the traitor to the revolution," the radio said in a broadcast monitored in Abidjan.

A person answering the telex at the presidential palace last night in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, said the city was quiet and Sankara's whereabouts were not known. The person, who would not provide identification, also insisted there were no casualties.

According to a communique read on the Burkina Faso radio, the country's borders were closed, a 9 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew imposed, and Sankara's National Revolutionary Council dissolved. It declared today a holiday so the nation could celebrate the former president's ouster.

Regional representatives of the new government will elect a president, the communique said.

Compaore is a former minister of state and of justice. His support was crucial to the 1983 coup by Sankara.

Telephone connections with Burkina Faso were cut, but the State Department in Washington said some shooting was heard last night in Ouagadougou. Burkina Radio did not mention fighting and gave no hint of the former president's whereabouts or fate.

Sankara had close ties with Moammar Kadhafi, although his support for the unpredictable Libyan leader was confined to rhetoric and he was considered a thorn in the side of France and other Western nations.

He was widely praised in the Third World for his attacks on Western "imperialism." Sankara dressed in camouflage outfits, with a red beret, and wore a pearl-handled revolver at international meetings.

As president, he called himself a "progressive" among Third World leaders and his speeches reiterated the themes of social justice, integrity and austerity. Sankara is knowledgable in the teachings of Marx, Lenin and Mao, and tried to build a collaboration between soldiers and peasant farmers.

On the first anniversary of his coup, Sankara changed his country's name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which was translated as "Land of the Upright Men."

Burkina Faso is an impoverished, landlocked country of 105,869 square miles just south of the Sahara Desert.

About half its 6.7 million people are animists, who believe spirits reside in all objects. Most of the others are Christians, predominantly Roman Catholic, or Moslems. French is the official language.

Hundreds of thousands of farm workers migrate each year seeking jobs in the neighboring countries of Ivory Coast and Ghana. Burkina Faso was hit hard by famine in the 1970s and is heavily dependent on foreign aid.