Mali Responds to ECOWAS: Interim PM to form unity government within 72 hours

Mali’s interim president, Dioncounda Traore, reappointed his prime minister on Sunday, calling upon him to name a new government of national unity within 72 hours to form a united front against Islamists in the north.

“Sheich Modibo Diarra was reappointed to his post by the president of the transition Dioncounda Traore in order to form a government of national unity in the next 72 hours,” Amadou Konate, an advisor with the prime minister’s office said.

The reappointment was also confirmed in a statement from the presidency read on state television on Sunday night.

West Africa’s ECOWAS bloc, which is pushing for the deployment of a 3,000-troop intervention force in Mali, had called upon Traroe to form a more representative government.

Earlier on Sunday, High Islamic Council, which Malians have increasingly come to view as their country’s moral authority, held a rally in the capital, Bamako.

Some 50,000 to 60,000 people packed into Mali’s national football stadium to call for peace and unity in the face of the ongoing occupation of the north by Islamist groups MUJWA, Ansareddine, and al Qaeda’s North African affiliate, AQIM.

Previously, Algeria has called for supporting the Malians in their choices by respecting their sovereignty and providing conditions of representation and consensus that gives the government legitimacy which is required for the current situation in the country.

Algeria has also asked, on the lips of the Minister Delegate in charge of Maghreb and African Affairs, Abdelkader Messahel last week, during his participation in the ministerial meeting of the core countries, in the capital of Niger Miami, for the need to help the transitional institutions “as a precondition” for the settlement of other problems in Mali, and called upon Malians, the political class, the living forces of the country including the armed forces, to launch a national project about the ‭future ‭of the country ‭and the settlement of the issue of North, and ‭bring together all Malians‭ to involve them in the procedures of restoring security and stability‭. ‬