ECOWAS talks focus on Mali troop deployment

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is trying to broker an end to the political crisis in Mali, which has been effectively sliced in two after a putsch.

Ivory Coast's Foreign Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan told Monday's meeting that it was to "set guidelines for ECOWAS' military support of Mali, in conjunction with the African Union". "We want to send a message about the will and determination of ECOWAS and all of Africa that we will stand by Mali in the reconquest of its territorial integrity," he said.

The task is "huge but not impossible", he added. Monday's meeting will look into proposals to solve the crisis made by ECOWAS' military leaders during meetings in Abidjan Friday and Saturday. The defence chiefs have held several meetings as part of ECOWAS efforts towards the resolution of the crisis.

The latest meeting comes in the wake of a formal request earlier this month by Mali's interim President Dioncounda Traore for ECOWAS military assistance to recover the occupied territory in the north and combat Islamist extremists there.

Traore's request for ECOWAS assistance made it clear that "the deployment of active military forces" would not be needed in the capital Bamako. "This is no longer the time for indecision but for concerted action," ECOWAS Commission chief Kadre Desire Ouedraogo said adding that action must be taken against "criminals of all sorts who occupy northern Mali".

Mali insists that the West African troops must not be combat forces but rather provide logistics and air support and would be involved in law and order operations after the north of the country has been retaken by Bamako.

"Nobody is trying to take the place of the Malians who are those primarily concerned," Ally Coulibaly, Ivory Coast's minister for African integration, said Saturday. The UN Security Council has so far failed to authorise ECOWAS operations in Mali as preparations were far from complete.

"The green light from the UN is an absolute condition," a Western diplomat in West Africa said recently, adding that not many African countries had so far volunteered to join the ECOWAS force. Senegal and Ghana are not planning to while Burkina Faso President Blaire Compaore, the top mediator in Mali's crisis, has signalled support.

An international Sahel conference presided by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is to meet on the crisis in New York on September 26. ECOWAS has had 3300 regional troops on standby for months but was awaiting a formal request from the Malian authorities to seek UN Security Council approval for a military deployment.

The country was considered one of the region's stable democracies until a March coup plunged it into turmoil. Taking advantage of the chaos, Islamic extremists allied to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb seized key towns in the huge arid north, an area larger than France or Texas.

Sources in the north said Monday the Islamists had destroyed the tomb of another Muslim saint in the region under their control, two months after similar incidents brought widespread condemnation. "The Islamists on Saturday destroyed the mausoleum of Cheik El-Kebir, 330km from Gao," a local politician told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Twelve of them arrived at the site. They demolished the mausoleum with hammers, picks."

The sources said the Islamist militant Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) was responsible for the destruction. Oumar Ould Gaddy, a Gao resident who is believed to be close to MUJAO, confirmed the reports.

"Cheik El-Kebir's mausoleum north of Gao was destroyed. That's true," he said. "The Islamists have confirmed this. There is another mausoleum which they will also destroy soon." Kebir's tomb is venerated by the Kunta tribe whose members live in Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Niger.

The latest attack came two months after Islamists destroyed two tombs at the ancient Djingareyber mud mosque in Timbuktu, an intellectual and spiritual capital which was crucial in the spread of Islam throughout Africa, soon after taking over northern Mali.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge