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Mali’s interim Prime Minister Moctar Ouane has created a platform to open talks with the Islamist militants who have wreaked havoc in the north of the country.
“Dialogue is not an exclusive solution, but rather an additional means of bringing back within the Republic those who have left it, often for existential reasons far removed from any fanaticism,” Ouane said on Friday.
He did not specify who would be included in the negotiating group.
France, the former colonial power of Mali, has 5,000 soldiers in Mali to fight against the ongoing insurgency. He has said in the past that he does not agree with Mali opening negotiations with insurgents who did not sign the 2015 peace accord.
A year ago, then-president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said the Malian government was ready to negotiate with the Islamists. Keita was overthrown in August 2020, but national post-coup talks have continued to endorse this policy.
Violence continues in the Sahel region, and recently there have been indications that it is spreading to West Africa, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin.
France has indicated that it is considering withdrawing its troops from the region because the billion-euro costly exercise was not as successful as Paris had hoped.
Some 55 French soldiers have been killed in the Sahel.
Chad said last week that it would send 1,000 troops to the Niger-Burkina Faso-Mali border region to provide support to French troops already present.
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