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Mali: Military intervention plan by ECOWAS at advanced stage
Nigerian junior foreign minister Nurudeen Mohammed warned that failing to contain insecurity in the Sahel region “portends a great danger to the African continent and the whole world at large”.
“It is evidently clear that these outlaws lost all overtures made for dialogue and have gone wild by attacking … the UN heritage sites,” he said. He also accused them of conscripting children into militias and kidnappings, along with arms, drugs and human trafficking “and the dispersal of armed groups across borders.”
Facing a potentially violent ouster, one of the extremist groups, Ansar Dine, which has occupied key cities such as Timbuktu for seven months, has called for dialogue.
On Thursday, the UN special envoy for the Sahel, Romano Prodi, the former Italian prime minister and ex-president of the European Commission, said every effort would be made to avoid military intervention.
Prodi made the comments after meeting Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika on Mali. Algeria is seen as important to any military operation, but it has been hesitant to get involved, preferring a negotiated solution.
While not a member of ECOWAS, Algeria is seen as key due to its superior military capabilities, intelligence services and experience battling Islamist extremism. Algeria also shares a 1,400-kilometre (875-mile) border with Mali.
The ECOWAS military strategy being presented to the ministers on Friday was drawn up with the help of experts from the African Union, UN and the region, and adopted by regional army chiefs this week.
