Mali: Interim President Traore meets with Tuareg separatist groups ahead of Sunday’s elections

Mali’s interim President Dioncounda Traore has met for the first time with members of two northern Tuareg separatist groups, ahead of the presidential and general elections to be held this coming Sunday.

The elections are meant to unify the West African nation after a March 2012 coup created a vacuum and allowed for al Qaeda-linked Islamist allies to seize the country’s desert north.

A military offensive earlier this year routed and scattered the Islamist fighters, African Union forces are still present and the northern region of the country has seen a rapid improvement in security.

The Tuareg separatists, have agreed to keep the peace in exchange for a promise of negotiations with the new government after the presidential and general elections.

“We spoke of peace and reconciliation,” Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assale, head of external relations for the Tuareg separatists, said following the closed-door meeting at the presidential residence late on Sunday.

Representatives of the Tuareg separatist movement and their allies, had been due to meet with military officials on Monday to review progress in implementing the preliminary peace deal signed in neighboring Burkina Faso.

The Tuareg separatists have been blamed for attacks in the northern city of Kidal and for the abduction of four election workers and a deputy mayor in another northern town last week. Two of the Tuareg delegation are named in arrest warrants for alleged crimes committed during the Islamist occupation of the north.-(Reuters)