SANTA MARIA - Ghanaian President John Atta-Mills was supported by nine other African heads of state who saw his team's white knuckle exit from the soccer World Cup on Friday. The leaders gathered during a break in the 38th summit of the Economic Community of West African States in island country Cape Verde, their eyes riveted to a giant screen for the quarter-final battle with Uruguay. With scores level at 1-1 the match failed to yield a winner after extra time and a penalty shoot-out handed the match to Uruguay 4-2, leaving the first World Cup on African soil without a team from the continent in the semi-final. The loss was followed by a long silence in the large hall of a hotel where the ten leaders were passionately following the match, according to an AFP journalist. In a somber mood, the dejected heads of state left immediately afterwards without comment to reporters outside, who had been trying to follow the match via the internet on their computers. Atta-Mills watched alongside his Cape Verdian counterpart Pedro Pires, Blaise Campaore from Burkina Faso, Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, Amadou Toumani Toure of Mali, Sierra Leone's Ernest Bai Koroma, Guinea-Bissau's Malam Bacai Sanha, Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade, Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan and Liberia's Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. The ten leaders are meeting in Santa Maria on Sal Island to address issues related to security in the subregion and to continue negotiations for vacancies within the organization. They broke from their in-camera session when the game was due to start and yells of delight rung out as Ghana went into the lead with Sulley Muntari netting on the stroke of half-time. But Diego Forlan leveled for Uruguay, who finally emerged victorious after the shootout. The ECOWAS summit is being held head of a special ECOWAS, Brazil, Cape Verde meeting on Saturday, in the presence of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Credit: www.abs-cbnnews.com