Mali’s interim Prime Minister Moctar Ouanes on Monday said his government was ready to hold talks with Islamist militants to help end the Sahel state’s eight-year-old insurgency that has killed thousands of people, reported Reuters. But, former colonial power France has rejected the idea.
“The conclusions of the inclusive national talks … very clearly indicated the necessity of an offer of dialogue with these armed groups,” Ouane said at a joint news conference in the capital Bamako. “We need to see in that an opportunity to engage in far-reaching discussions with the communities in order to redefine the contours of a new governance of the areas that are concerned.”
But French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who is in Mali’s capital, Bamako, on a two-day visit, ruled the option out.
Le Drian said there is a difference between engaging with armed groups which had signed peace accords, and terror groups. He added that that the terror groups had not signed a 2015 peace deal that France considers a framework for restoring peace in the country.
“In the peace agreements there is a very essential element which is the reconstituted army,” he said. “The prime minister has just referred to it and it is the urgency of the moment. And then there are the terrorist groups that have not signed the peace agreement, things are simple.”
The French foreign minister said his statement was shared by the United Nations Security Council and countries from the G5 Sahel group, a regional force that includes Mali.
Le Drian’s visit is the first by any French politician since former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was toppled on August 18.
Notably, swathes of Mali, a vast West African nation of some 19 million people, lie outside government control. The France government has deployed around 5,100 soldiers across the Sahel region as part of its anti-jihadist Operation Barkhane.
