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Mali: African Union intervention slated for early 2013
Ivory Coast’s president says mandated African Union forces could intervene in lawless northern Mali early next year, calling such an operation “urgent” to prevent the area in western Africa from becoming a hotbed of terrorists and drug traffickers.
Alassane Ouattara chairs the West African bloc – the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has put together a plan for 3,300 African Union troops to be deployed in the region.
Ouattara urged the United Nations on Wednesday to pass a resolution this month allowing the operation. If that happens, he said on France’s Europe-1 radio, the operation could start “in the first quarter” of 2013. “We are in a position to intervene, the troops are training.”
Negotiations on a political solution among the Islamist extremists and Tuareg rebels vying for control of northern Mali are also under way.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.