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Mali’s neighbours back junta exit plan

Renegade Malian soldiers appear on television at the ORTM television studio in Bamako in this March 22, 2012 still image taken from video. REUTERS/Mali TV via Reuters TV

By Bate Felix and Adam Diarra

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Mali’s two-week-old junta

agreed on Friday to hand over rule to civilians in return for the end of sanctions by worried neighbours who had threatened

to strangle the economy of the West African country.

The accord between leaders of a March 22 coup and regional mediators came

the day Tuareg rebels declared the independence of the northern half of Mali they seized in a lightning advance earlier this

week – a secession bid shunned by the world.

The exit of the junta has been a precondition for countries of the

15-state West African bloc ECOWAS to step in to help resolve a crisis in what had been one of the region’s most stable

democracies, possibly by the use of military force.

“The parliament speaker is appointed by the Constitutional Court

as interim president,” read the five-page document signed by the mediators and Captain Amadou Sanogo, the hitherto obscure

officer behind last month’s coup.

“With the signing of this accord, the current president of ECOWAS will take the

necessary steps to lift the sanctions imposed on Mali,” it said of a crippling border closure, the suspension of its account

at the regional central bank, and travel bans and asset freezes on junta members.

The accord did not say when Sanogo

would step down to allow the swearing-in of parliament speaker Diouncounda Traore and acknowledged that holding elections

within the 40 days set out by the constitution would be impossible in the circumstances.

“It will be necessary to

organise a political transition leading to free, democratic and transparent elections across the whole of the territory,” it

said. The only reference in the document to ousted President Amadou Toumani Touri, who is still in hiding, was that he would

officially resign.

“PALACE OF AZAWAD”

When an election will be possible is hard to say after desert Tuaregs

earlier proclaimed independence for what they call the state of Azawad, the northern zone they seized while the southern

capital Bamako was distracted by the coup.

The nomads have nurtured the dream of a Saharan homeland since Mali’s

independence in 1960 but neighbours fear the creation of a new state could encourage separatists elsewhere.

Moreover,

the presence within the rebellion of Islamists with ties to al Qaeda has sparked wider fears of the emergence of a new rogue

state threatening global security.

“The Executive Committee of the MNLA calls on the entire international community to

immediately recognise, in a spirit of justice and peace, the independent state of Azawad,” Billal Ag Acherif,

secretary-general of the Tuareg-led MNLA rebel group said on its www.mnlamov.net home page.

The territory claimed as

Azawad roughly corresponds to the three northern regions of Mali which make up a zone larger than France. The term is thought

to have linguistic links to the dried up Azawagh tributary of the giant Niger river which snakes through West Africa from

Guinea to Nigeria.

The statement listed decades of Tuareg grievances over their treatment by governments dominated by

black southerners in the distant capital Bamako. It said the group recognised all borders with neighbouring states and

pledged to create a democratic state based on the principles of the United Nations charter.

Reuters Television

pictures from the northern town of Gao taken hours before the overnight declaration showed MNLA soldiers celebrating in the

local governor’s residence, decked with an MNLA flag and re-christened “The Palace of Azawad”.

However the 54-state

African Union rejected the independence call and urged the rest of the world to shun the secession bid. Algerian Prime

Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said his country could not accept a break-up of Mali, while neighbouring Mauritania and even fellow

Tuaregs in Niger dismissed it.

The U.S. State Department rejected the MNLA independence call and ex-colonial power

France said it was now up to Mali’s neighbours to see whether talks were possible with the MNLA – a move that could target

an autonomy deal short of independence.

 

“The demands of the northern Tuareg population are old and for

too long had not received adequate and necessary responses,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, while

stressing that any deal should leave Mali’s borders intact.

Initial reactions in Bamako were of dismay.

“This

is really a bad joke,” Toure Alassane, a 42-year-old native of Timbuktu said at a gathering of about 200 northerners

protesting the move in the capital.

“It will never work. You don’t just declare independence when people don’t have

food to eat and nothing is functioning in the north,” he said. Widespread food shortages caused by the failure of last

year’s rains have been aggravated by insecurity.

In the northern town of Kidal, one resident said control was not in

the hands of the MNLA but of the Ansar Dine Islamist group which wants to impose sharia, Islamic law, across

Mali.

“Nothing goes without their say,” the resident said.

ECOWAS is preparing a force of up to 3,000 soldiers

which could be deployed in Mali with the aim of securing the return to constitutional order and halting any further rebel

advance.

French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet put the MNLA’s fighting strength at a maximum 3,000, and that of

allied Islamists at about one tenth that number. He said France could provide an ECOWAS force with help including

transport.

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