France’s foreign minister said on Thursday that the transition in Mali needs to be quick, but that the coup d’etat in the country would not stop French military operations targeting Islamist militants.
The leaders of the military coup that ousted President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in Mali on Aug. 18 have told a delegation of West African mediators that they want to stay in power for a three-year transition period, ex-Nigeria President, Goodluck Jonathan said on Wednesday.
“The transition must be done quickly, power returned to civilians and that there is a political agenda put in place to allow this country to find a political stability,” Jean-Yves Le Drian told RTL radio.
He said the West African mediation had to be concluded quickly to restore some stability because it was indispensable to continue the fight against Islamist militants.
Former colonial power, France, has some 5,100 troops in the Sahel region with a large portion operating from Mali, where it intervened in 2013 to stop an Islamist militant advance on the capital Bamako.
“(The French operation) will continue,” Le Drian said. “This battle continues. The Junta say the same thing.”
Security analysts across the West African region have raised some suspicions of tacit complicity of France in the military coup d’etat given the strength of the French armed forces present on ground in Mali and its refusal to deter the coup or aid the civil authorities in maintaining the democratic constitutional order.
In Cote d’Ivoire where French sympathies were with the Democratic forces, a sitting government of President Laurent Gbagbo was shelled out of the Presidential Palace.
French position calling for speedy transition is at variance with more strident positions of regional blocs, ECOWAS and AU, calling for immediate restoration of civil order and EU position on non-recognition of the military putschists.
