PARIS (Reuters) – France will ask Mali and Burkina Faso, Tuesday during the G5 Sahel summit in Mauritania, for guarantees on their commitments in favor of peace, so as not to jeopardize the military gains recently acquired on the ground , said a source at the Elysee on Monday.
“All the progress recorded is fragile and can be jeopardized if the political dynamic does not follow,” said this source.
The President of the Spanish Government Pedro Sanchez and the French Head of State Emmanuel Macron are due to make their first trip to Africa on Tuesday since the coronavirus crisis at the G5 Sahel countries summit (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger , Chad).
The other European leaders, such as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the President of the Italian Council Giuseppe Conte will participate in this summit only by videoconference. Five G5 Sahel heads of state and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres will also take part in the meeting, according to a press release from the Spanish government published on Monday.
From a French government source, the situation is particularly worrying in Mali, the authorities of which no longer discuss a peace plan, the “particularly laborious political sequence” having relegated to the background “the implementation of the peace agreement of Alger “.
This situation is perceptible in Burkina Faso as in Mali so that the stakes are high and it is necessary to make sure that the electoral context does not destroy the gains that have been obtained, said this source.
Burkina Faso goes to the polls at the end of November for legislative elections and for a presidential election to which the outgoing head of state Marc Roch Kaboré should stand.
The security situation remains precarious in the Sahel despite the recent progress recorded in the fight against jihadist groups with in particular the death of the head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Abdelmalek Droukdel, killed in early June by the French army during ‘an operation in northern Mali.
(John Irish; French version Nicolas Delame, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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