There is a risk of "terrorist" groups setting up in the deserts of northern Mali, French President Francois Hollande warned Monday after talks with Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou in Paris.
"There is a threat of terrorist groups setting up in northern Mali. There is outside intervention that is destabilising Mali and setting up groups whose vocation goes well beyond Mali, in Africa and perhaps beyond," Hollande said.
Issoufou, whose country shares a long and porous desert border with Mali, himself warned last week that jihadi fighters from Afghanistan and Pakistan were training Islamist groups there as world powers mull armed intervention. ...
"It's for the Africans to go to the Security Council, we will back the resolution that will be put forward by ECOWAS," Hollande said.
"If an intervention is decided upon, it's for the Africans to lead it, France like other powers putting themselves at the service of the United Nations."
Unless French combat forces are the core of an intervention force, the Tuareg/jihadi state developing in the north of Mali won't be defeated any time this year.
UPDATE: The African Union is having the invitations printed:
The African Union has asked the U.N. Security Council for a resolution that would allow military intervention in Mali, where Islamist militants have become an international security threat, the union's commission chief said on Tuesday.
France has already RSVPed:
Mali's former colonial ruler France has six of its citizens held hostage in an unknown location in the region by al Qaeda's north African arm. It has said it would be ready to help restore stability in Mali if there was a Security Council resolution.
Intervention should make the situation less bad.
