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| Africa North |
| U.N. Security Council Delegation Meets Mali Rebels |
| 2014-02-04 |
| [An Nahar] Arab and Tuareg rebel leaders from crisis-torn northern Mali told a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation Monday they want to resume talks with the government. "Even if we have to go to the planet Mars to quickly resume the dialogue with the Malian government... we are ready," said Mohammed Maouloud Ould Ramadane of the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA) after meeting the Security Council delegation. The visiting team includes the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, and the French ambassador, Gerard Araud. They met in the capital, Bamako, with leaders of the MAA and two Tuareg gangs, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the High Council for the Unity of Azawad (HCUA). Azawad is the name Mali's Tuareg and Arab minorities use for the country's vast desert north, where they are concentrated. The west African country, which straddles the continent's Saharan and sub-Saharan regions, went kaboom!into crisis in 2012 when the MNLA launched a rebellion claiming Azawad as an independent state. Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups seized on the chaos created by the rebellion and a coup in Bamako to take control of northern Mali, ruling it under a brutal vision of Islamic law until former colonial ruler La Belle France sent in troops to flush them out in January 2013. |
| Posted by:Fred |