Mali FM pays a two-day visit to Algeria
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Mali Foreign Minister Sadio Lamine Sow arrived in Algeria Sunday in a two-day working visit.
At his arrival at Algiers International Airport of Houari- Boumediene, Mali FM was welcomed by the Minister for Maghreb and African Affairs, Abdelkader Messahel.
During his visit, Mr Sow is due to hold talks with top Algerian officials, while the crisis in Malishould be on the core of these discussions.
Algiers is seen as a key country in terms of its ability to resolve the crisis in this Sahel nation hit by violence in the north after that Tuareg separatists of the National Movement of the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) proclaimed their independent state there.
This visit comes at a time Northern Mali is controlled for nearly three months by Tuareg rebels and Islamist extremists, including the Movement for the Monotheism and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO),which claimed the suicide attack that targeted Friday a headquarters of National Gendarmeriein Ouargla, 850 km southeast Algiers.
Algiers is familiar with the Malian issue, as it has already played mediation roles between theTuareg rebels and Bamako. It is worth to recall that a peace treaty was signed between Tuaregrebels in Kidal, northeast of Mali, and Bamako, in Algiers in 2006.
Previously, Al Qaeda-linked militants in northern Mali went on the rampage in Timbuktu, destroying ancient tombs of Muslim saints just after Unesco listed the fabled city as an endangered world heritage site.
The onslaught by armed militants from the Ansar Dine group was launched amid unrest in Mali’s vast desert that erupted in the chaotic aftermath of a March 22 coup in Bamako.
In addition to three historic mosques, Timbuktu is home to 16 cemeteries and mausoleums, according to the Unesco website.
Ansar Dine, one of the armed militant groups which has seized control in northern Mali, has said no site would be safe in Timbuktu.
The Ansar Dine spokesman suggested Saturday’s action was in retaliation for the Unesco decision on Thursday to put the World Heritage site, a cradle of Islamic learning founded in the fifth century, on its endangered list.
