ABIDJAN, Jan 12 (Reuters) – West African regional bloc
ECOWAS will begin sending soldiers to Mali by Monday as part of
a mission to drive al Qaeda-linked fighters from the country’s
north, an Ivory Coast government official said on Saturday.
Malian soldiers retook a strategic central town on Friday
after France intervened with air strikes to halt a southward
advance by Islamist insurgents.
“The mandate for the deployment was signed by the president
yesterday … Monday by the latest, the troops will be there or
will have started to arrive,” said Ali Coulibaly, Ivory Coast’s
African Integration Minister.
Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara currently holds
the rotating chairmanship of ECOWAS.
ECOWAS has for months lobbied the international community to
support its plan for a regional military force to end the
nine-month occupation of Mali’s north by Islamist groups Ansar
Dine, MUJWA, and AQIM, al Qaeda’s North African affiliate.
Potential international partners in the operation had balked
at fully backing the mission amid doubts about financing and
disagreements over the force’s mandate.
However an offensive this week by the Islamist coalition
that threatened to seize the town of Sevare, home to a military
base and a gateway towards the capital Bamako, around 500 km
(300 miles) to the south, forced the French intervention.
“Things are accelerating … This is not a mission to simply
protect Sevare. We need to retake the northern part (of Mali)
from the jihadists,” Coulibaly said. “The reconquest of the
north has already begun.”
