Burkina Faso FM: “Mali Rebels should end Ties with Terrorists to Continue Talks”

Foreign Minister of Burkina Faso, Djibril Bassole, the chief mediator in the regional efforts to end Mali unrest said that he had told the rebels in northern Mali that no dialogue with them will be held before they cut all their relationships with groups and terrorist organizations.

Media sources said that Djibril Bassole mediator of the economic group of the West ‭African countries ‭”ECOWAS” met on Monday with rebel leaders in the ‭city “Gao” and the leaders of Ansareddine group in Kidal‭. ‬

Bassole told reporters after his return to Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, on Tuesday; “we can only encourage a dialogue at this stage, we do what we can to create the necessary conditions for dialogue. We reiterated our condition which is ending the relationship between Ansareddine group and terrorist movements, ‭ ‬ as an official statement to cut ‭the links at the level of operations has not yet been announced, ‭but we did not ‭ ‬ see something which ‭prove direct cooperation on the ground”.

The Economic Community of West African States, launched initial contacts with rebel groups in Mali, and received diplomatic initiatives with priority in recent weeks, with the stalled plans for military intervention.

In a separate context, a Mali non-governmental organization reported, that hundreds of kids were recruited by armed Islamic groups in their ranks in northern Mali, as Agence France-Presse quoted the results of an investigation by the association “Mali Alliance for the Rights of the Child,” about the situation of children in the country, that hundreds of kids aged between 17 and 19, are among the armed groups that control the three northern regions, which are Gao, Kidal, and Timbuktu‭. ‬