Toure 'ready' to talk with rebels
2008-06-09 09:18
Bamako - Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure said on Sunday he was open to negotiations with Tuareg rebels, days after an army offensive against their northern base.
Mali said its army killed at least 20 Tuareg rebels near the Algerian border this week in the heaviest fighting since a rebel assault last month on the Abeibara military camp, which killed about 25 soldiers and shattered the latest accord to end a growing revolt in the Sahara.
Toure said the June 03 and 04 army attacks against fighters loyal to Tuareg leader Ibrahim Ag Bahanga was a direct response to last month's rebel strike.
Toure said: "Those who attack our bases, we will attack them back without hesitation. But each time that I can give a chance to peace (by negotiations), I will do so."
The government overhauled its military leadership on Thursday after fighting subsided, promoting to overall armed forces chief the head of the land army, who colleagues said had spent the last few months in the north battling nomadic rebels.
Ceasefire fails to end fighting
Toure said the majority of Malians were in favour of launching a war against the Tuareg rebels, who took up arms last year demanding greater rights for the country's thinly-populated desert north.
The uprising in gold-exporting Mali had followed the pattern of previous revolts by Tuareg tribesmen in the 1960s and 1990s, and mirrors a similar Tuareg insurgency that began in early 2007 in neighbouring Niger's uranium-producing north.
A Libyan-brokered ceasefire failed to end fighting, which had intensified in recent weeks around Mali's remote borderlands at the heart of the Sahara, a haven for armed groups and smugglers.
Some analysts and crime experts argued that the revolt in Mali was really a battle for control of lucrative contraband routes into southern Algeria.
More than 1 000 Tuareg civilians had arrived in Mali's southern neighbour, Burkina Faso, including more than 300 who were sheltering in the national stadium in the capital Ouagadougou.
Toure said on Sunday he did not believe these were refugees from the Tuareg conflict.