The meeting, which is held on the sidelines of the Forum for Peace, is part of a broader context of destabilization of the region by the Libyan crisis.
Le Monde with AFP
The French President receives, Friday, November 12, his counterparts Burkinabé Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, Chadien Mahamat Idriss Déby and Nigerian Mohamed Bazoum to evoke “the situation in Sahel”, announced Thursday L’Elysee.
This meeting is organized in the morning on the sidelines of an international conference for Libya and the Forum for Peace. It must carry “on the regional dimension of the Libyan crisis,” said a source close to the Presidency.
She intervenes, while the relations between France, ex-colonial power and historical partner, and the Mali have deteriorated, after a new coup in Bamako.
Reduction of the workforce
Paris has undertaken in June to reorganize its military device in the Sahel, leaving its three most northern bases in the northern Mali to refocus it around Gao and Meneka, on the confines of Niger and Burkina Faso. This plan provides for a downsizing, more than 5,000, at 2,500 or 3,000 by 2023.
The tension is mounted by a notch in September when the Prime Minister of Malien Transition Choguel Kokalla Maïga accused Paris of “abandonment in full flight” because of this plan. Critics supposed to justify the possible recourse by Bamako to the Russian private paramilitary society, described as close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Chiefs of Russian Diplomacy Sergei Lavrov and Malian Abdoulaye Diop reaffirmed their willingness to continue the military partnership between the two countries, arguing with a terrorist risk reinforced by the partial withdrawal of French troops.