By Bate Felix and Adam Diarra
BAMAKO (Reuters) – Mali’s two-week-old junta
agreed on Friday to hand over rule to civilians in return for the end of sanctions by worried neighbours who had threatened
to strangle the economy of the West African country.
The accord between leaders of a March 22 coup and regional mediators came
the day Tuareg rebels declared the independence of the northern half of Mali they seized in a lightning advance earlier this
week – a secession bid shunned by the world.
The exit of the junta has been a precondition for countries of the
15-state West African bloc ECOWAS to step in to help resolve a crisis in what had been one of the region’s most stable
democracies, possibly by the use of military force.
“The parliament speaker is appointed by the Constitutional Court
as interim president,” read the five-page document signed by the mediators and Captain Amadou Sanogo, the hitherto obscure
officer behind last month’s coup.
“With the signing of this accord, the current president of ECOWAS will take the
necessary steps to lift the sanctions imposed on Mali,” it said of a crippling border closure, the suspension of its account
at the regional central bank, and travel bans and asset freezes on junta members.
The accord did not say when Sanogo
would step down to allow the swearing-in of parliament speaker Diouncounda Traore and acknowledged that holding elections
within the 40 days set out by the constitution would be impossible in the circumstances.
“It will be necessary to
organise a political transition leading to free, democratic and transparent elections across the whole of the territory,” it
said. The only reference in the document to ousted President Amadou Toumani Touri, who is still in hiding, was that he would
officially resign.
“PALACE OF AZAWAD”
When an election will be possible is hard to say after desert Tuaregs
earlier proclaimed independence for what they call the state of Azawad, the northern zone they seized while the southern
capital Bamako was distracted by the coup.
The nomads have nurtured the dream of a Saharan homeland since Mali’s
independence in 1960 but neighbours fear the creation of a new state could encourage separatists elsewhere.
Moreover,
the presence within the rebellion of Islamists with ties to al Qaeda has sparked wider fears of the emergence of a new rogue
state threatening global security.
“The Executive Committee of the MNLA calls on the entire international community to
immediately recognise, in a spirit of justice and peace, the independent state of Azawad,” Billal Ag Acherif,
secretary-general of the Tuareg-led MNLA rebel group said on its www.mnlamov.net home page.
The territory claimed as
Azawad roughly corresponds to the three northern regions of Mali which make up a zone larger than France. The term is thought
to have linguistic links to the dried up Azawagh tributary of the giant Niger river which snakes through West Africa from
Guinea to Nigeria.
The statement listed decades of Tuareg grievances over their treatment by governments dominated by
black southerners in the distant capital Bamako. It said the group recognised all borders with neighbouring states and
pledged to create a democratic state based on the principles of the United Nations charter.
Reuters Television
pictures from the northern town of Gao taken hours before the overnight declaration showed MNLA soldiers celebrating in the
local governor’s residence, decked with an MNLA flag and re-christened “The Palace of Azawad”.
However the 54-state
African Union rejected the independence call and urged the rest of the world to shun the secession bid. Algerian Prime
Minister Ahmed Ouyahia said his country could not accept a break-up of Mali, while neighbouring Mauritania and even fellow
Tuaregs in Niger dismissed it.
The U.S. State Department rejected the MNLA independence call and ex-colonial power
France said it was now up to Mali’s neighbours to see whether talks were possible with the MNLA – a move that could target
an autonomy deal short of independence.
“The demands of the northern Tuareg population are old and for
too long had not received adequate and necessary responses,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, while
stressing that any deal should leave Mali’s borders intact.
Initial reactions in Bamako were of dismay.
“This
is really a bad joke,” Toure Alassane, a 42-year-old native of Timbuktu said at a gathering of about 200 northerners
protesting the move in the capital.
“It will never work. You don’t just declare independence when people don’t have
food to eat and nothing is functioning in the north,” he said. Widespread food shortages caused by the failure of last
year’s rains have been aggravated by insecurity.
In the northern town of Kidal, one resident said control was not in
the hands of the MNLA but of the Ansar Dine Islamist group which wants to impose sharia, Islamic law, across
Mali.
“Nothing goes without their say,” the resident said.
ECOWAS is preparing a force of up to 3,000 soldiers
which could be deployed in Mali with the aim of securing the return to constitutional order and halting any further rebel
advance.
French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet put the MNLA’s fighting strength at a maximum 3,000, and that of
allied Islamists at about one tenth that number. He said France could provide an ECOWAS force with help including
transport.
