New interim Malian President Colonel Assimi Goita looks on at members of the Armed Forces after his swearing-in ceremony in Bamako on June 7 last year. AFP
Mali’s strongman leader Assimi Goita said on January 10 Bamako remained open to dialogue after the West African bloc ECOWAS imposed stringent sanctions on the troubled Sahel country over delayed elections.
In a sharp escalation after months of simmering diplomatic tensions, leaders from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on January 9 agreed to shutter borders with the Sahel state and impose a trade embargo.
That decision was backed on January 10 by France, Mali’s former colonial power, at the UN Security Council.
The West African bloc also agreed to cut financial aid, freeze Mali’s assets at the Central Bank of West African States, and to recall their ambassadors from the country.
“Even if we regret the illegitimate, illegal and inhumane nature of certain decisions, Mali remains open to dialogue with the Economic Community of West African States to find a consensus,” Goita said on state TV.
Goita did not detail how his regime would respond to the stringent sanctions.
The coordinated action against Mali followed a proposal by its army-dominated government last month to stay in power for up to five years before staging elections – despite international demands that it respect a promise to hold elections in February.
ECOWAS also rejected a revised proposal the regime, led by Goita who took power in a military coup in August 2020, submitted to the bloc on the eve of the weekend summit.
At a UN Security Council meeting on West Africa on January 10, the French ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Riviere, voiced his country’s “full support for ECOWAS’s efforts”.
Relations between Mali and France, its former colonial master which has thousands of troops in the country, have deteriorated since the 2020 coup that ousted elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
US ambassador Richard Mills urged Bamako “to return to democracy in a timely fashion”, but stopped short of taking a stand on the ECOWAS sanctions, which it is reviewing.
After an earlier wave of sanctions from ECOWAS following the 2020 coup, Goita had promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022 presidential and legislative elections.
But he staged a second coup in May 2021, forcing out an interim civilian government, disrupting the reform timetable, and provoking widespread international condemnation.
As ECOWAS continued to insist on elections in February, the military regime argued that rampant insecurity posed a problem and that peaceful elections took priority over speed.
Mali has struggled to quell a brutal jihadist insurgency that started in 2012 before spreading to Burkina Faso and Niger. Swathes of its vast territory lie outside government control.
Mali’s junta has also announced the recall of its ambassadors in ECOWAS states and the closure of its borders in response to the sanctions, vowing to take “all necessary measures to retaliate”.
But the military junta in Guinea said in a statement read out on state television there that it would keep its links with Mali open, saying it had nothing to do with the sanctions agreed at the weekend ECOWAS summit.
ECOWAS has suspended Guinea from the bloc and imposed some sanctions in retaliation for the September 5 coup that deposed president Alpha Conde.
