Talks between a delegation of West African envoys and the military officers overthrowing Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita have ended without a deal on how the country should return to civilian rule following last week’s coup.
The meditation team from the regional block Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) would report to heads of state on progress made for a Mali summit later this week, said Colonel Ismael Wague on Monday, but the military spokesman added that the final decision on creating an interim transitional government would be made “by Malians”.
He added that no timeline had been set for elections to return the country to civil rule. The coups earlier said they would hold elections “within a reasonable time.”
Both sides said that Vice President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita – whose return to office was initially demanded by the Economic Community of West African States – no longer wanted to commit to duty [Ali Ousmane Toure/Anadolu]
Separately, the two sides that met in the capital Bamako said that Keita – whose return to office was initially demanded by ECOWAS – no longer wanted to repay.
Wague claimed that Keita, whose term would expire in 2023, was fired of his own free will and not because he was under pressure from mutual soldiers.
The ECOWAS delegation met the 75-year-old former president, who was held at the military barracks in Kati, near the capital Bamako.
“President Keita told us that he had fired her, that he was not forced to do this and that he did not want to return,” former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who led the delegation, said on Monday. “He says he wants a speedy transition to allow the country [to] return as soon as possible to a civilian regime. “
“Do I really have a choice?”
On the morning of August 18, soldiers at the barracks in Kati launched a mutiny and then began holding officials in the capital. They later surrounded the private residence where Keita stayed with his prime minister and fired shots into the air. The coup insists she seized the president for his own protection.
At midnight, Keita appeared on state television and announced his immediate resignation, as well as the dissolution of his government and the National Assembly. “Today, certain sections of the military have decided that intervention is necessary. Do I really have a choice? Because I do not want blood to be shed,” Keita added in his brief statement.
Before dawn, five military officers also made a televised statement announcing that their commission was now in control.
The coup against Keita triggered shock waves among Mali neighbors, who feared a country hit by escalating violence would spiral into chaos.
ECOWAS – consisting of 15 members – on Saturday sent a high-level delegation to Bamako to support its demands for the “immediate return to constitutional order”.
The bloc has ousted Mali from its decision-making institutions, closed borders and stopped financial flows with the country.
“There were discussions on both sides, seeing that at this stage nothing has been set, nothing has been decided, and that as far as we are concerned, the definitive architecture of the transition by us will be discussed and defined,” Wague said.
Jonathan said: “We have agreed on a number of issues, but there are some issues that we do not agree on. So on these issues we told the military the thoughts of ECOWAS and we asked them to go and check. “
Security crisis
While last week’s coup met with international condemnation, thousands of opposition supporters celebrated the removal of the president in the streets of Bamako, and the coups said they had completed the “work” of the Protestants.
The coup follows months of protests demanding Keita’s resignation as public discontent with the government grew about alleged corruption, persistent economic misery and worse security in large parts of the country, where branches of al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) are active.
Mali has struggled to regain stability since 2012, when ethnic Tuareg rebels and loose-armed groups visited the northern two-thirds of the country, forcing former colonial power France to intervene to defeat them temporarily. .
While the government and international actors have tried to restore peace in the north, violence has gradually increased in the central region of the country, where the state is largely absent, and spilled into neighboring countries.
Those attacks grew fivefold between 2016 and 2020, with 4,000 people killed in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, up from about 770 in 2016, according to the UN. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes and thousands of schools are closed.
At the same time, authorities’ support from some local militias against others and accusations of abuse and extrajudicial killings by Malian troops have raised deep-seated mistrust and hostility in regions with little official presence otherwise.
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