EU: Mali crisis a threat to Europe

BRUSSELS: EU leaders said yesterday the crisis in Mali, where militants have seized control of much of the north of the country, was an “immediate threat” to Europe, and threatened to impose sanctions on the armed militia there.
It was the first time EU heads of state and government had pronounced collectively on the crisis, which broke out in March when soldiers toppled the president, leaving a power vacuum that enabled Tuareg rebels to take control of the north. Militants, some allied with Al-Qaeda, have since hijacked their revolt.
“This situation poses an immediate threat to the Sahel region as well as to West and North Africa and to Europe,” EU leaders said in a statement after a summit in Brussels yesterday.
EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said this week “terrorists and drug traffickers” might have a free hand in Mali unless the government regained control.
Regional leaders and international organisations were meeting yesterday in Mali’s capital Bamako to discuss whether the militant should be dislodged by military intervention or a more gradual political approach.
The UN Security Council last week gave African leaders 45 days to draw up a plan for military intervention to retake control of the north.
France, Mali’s former colonial ruler, has six hostages held by the militants, and has been pushing hard for military action.
French President Francois Hollande is said to believe there is a risk that Al-Qaeda’s North African arm, AQIM, is cementing its base in the West African state, creating a launch pad for an attack on French soil.
Diplomatic and security sources say there is “credible” evidence of planned attacks following botched bombings by AQIM at French embassies in Mali and Mauritania.
However, diplomats say that foreign military intervention in Mali is months away.
The European Union will step up its humanitarian response to the crisis, and examine support for the envisaged international military force, said yesterday’s statement by the European Council, which represents EU member states.
“The EU will maintain the option to adopt targeted restrictive measures against those involved in the armed groups in northern Mali and those hindering the return to constitutional order,” the statement said.
The African and European leaders were meeting in Bamako, Mali yesterday to work on the logistics of reconquering Mali’s desert north from armed militants.
The summit whose start was initially scheduled for 0900 GMT was delayed for several hours and comes a week after the UN Security Council passed a resolution giving West African nations 45 days to lay out details for a military intervention.
The vast region the size of France fell under control of radical Islamist groups in the chaos that followed a March coup in the country that was once considered one of Africa’s most stable democracies.
Concerned that the area could become the same type of haven for Al-Qaeda rebels that Afghanistan was a decade ago, Mali’s neighbours and the West are keen to drive the radicals out.
In the months that they have been in control of the region, the militants have imposed their version of sharia law, arresting unveiled women, stoning to death unmarried couples and amputating the limbs of suspected thieves, according to residents and rights groups.
They have also destroyed ancient Muslim shrines that have been revered for centuries and are classified as World Heritage Sites, but which the radicals consider blasphemous.
Yesterday’s meeting were also to discuss the possibility of negotiation with some of the armed groups controlling the north.