European foreign ministers have been summoned to an emergency meeting in Brussels on Thursday to decide how to support France's war in Mali.
They are expected to finalise plans to dispatch hundreds of EU military personnel to Bamako to train half the Malian army and appoint a head of that mission as well as a senior diplomat as an EU special representative to the Sahel.
Caught by surprise by the Islamist surge at the weekend from the north of the country, individual EU countries have been quick to offer the French logistical support, mainly in the form of transport aircraft from the Germans and the British. While the French media have largely cheered on the president, François Hollande, in what is considered to be a rare display of decisiveness in Africa, they have also showered scorn on the other Europeans, seen as failing to step up to the plate.
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EU authorizes military training mission for Mali The European Union on Thursday authorized sending a military training mission to Mali to help the African nation fend off the Islamist rebels that have taken over a broad swath of territory.
The EU said the mission would provide instruction to the Malian army on matters of command and control, logistics, civilian protection and humanitarian law. It would not involve combat.
Although dispatching the training team will require another decision by European leaders, the move Thursday was aimed at bolstering support for the Malian government and came days after major EU power France launched its own military operation to help its onetime colony.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
