Newly appointed Malian Prime Minister Diango Cissoko on Tuesday said that his priorities are to regain control of the north from Islamists and reunify the country, amid international condemnation of his predecessor’s ouster.
“The priority is the recovery of the north and the organization of elections ... I want to create a government of national unity,” Cissoko told reporters, just hours after his appointment in place of former Malian prime minister Cheick Modibo Diarra, who quit on Tuesday under military pressure.
Acting Malian President Dioncounda Traore swiftly appointed Cissoko — a veteran public servant — after Diarra was forced out.
Diarra quit after being arrested by soldiers on orders from former coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo, a move swiftly condemned by the UN and US.
The UN Security council joined calls from France, the US, the European Union and regional bloc ECOWAS for the military to stop meddling in political affairs, and threatened targeted sanctions against those preventing the restoration of constitutional order.
The fresh crisis in the West African nation comes amid confusion over plans for a foreign military intervention to drive out the Islamists who occupied more than half of Mali’s territory in the wake of a coup led by Sanogo in March.
Diarra’s resignation came a day after the EU approved plans to deploy an military training mission of about 250 troops Mali to help Bamako regain control of the north.
The 60-year-old astrophysicist and former chairman of Microsoft Africa was seized at home by soldiers late on Monday and hours later went on state television to announce he was stepping down.
A spokesman for Sanogo’s former junta in Europe, Bakary Mariko, told France 24 television the event was “not a new coup d’etat,” but observers say it was clear Diarra was strongarmed out.
“The objective [of the ouster] is most likely to prevent a direct ECOWAS military deployment in Mali which would undermine the power base of Captain Sanogo and his associates,” London-based analyst Samir Gadio said.
A member of Diarra’s family, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters the former prime minister was “under house arrest.”
Diarra was an advocate of French-backed plans to send in a West African intervention force to drive out the extremists, who are running the zone according to their brutal interpretation of Shariah Islamic law.
Such foreign intervention is fiercely opposed by Sanogo, who still wields considerable influence despite handing over power to an interim government after his March 22 coup.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing