‘Mali reluctant to accept blue helmets’

Jan Eliasson, the deputy secretary general of the United Nations, said on Monday that the Malian government was hesitant to allow UN peacekeepers to be deployed in the country, despite a growing convergence on the need for such an operation among the five permanent members of the Security Council and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

He also said that UN peacekeepers could be deployed only when fighting between French forces and local fighters comes to an end.

“For the UN to be peacekeeping, we will have to wait until a stabilization of the situation,” he stated.

France launched a war in Mali on January 11 under the pretext of halting the advance of rebel fighters in the West African country.


On February 1, Amnesty International condemned “serious human rights breaches” including the killing of children in the French war in Mali.

Chaos broke out in the West African country after Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012. The coup leaders said they mounted the coup in response to the government’s inability to contain the Tuareg rebellion in the north of the country, which had been going on for two months.

However, in the wake of the coup d’état, the Tuareg rebels took control of the entire northern desert region, but the Ansar Dine extremists then pushed them aside and took control of the region, which is larger than France or Texas.

MN/HGL

Source Article from http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/02/12/288521/mali-reluctant-to-accept-un-peacekeepers/

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