Mali president meets rebel chiefs

Mali’s interim president Dioncounda Traore exchange gifts with Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) delegation leader,  Ibrahim Ag Assaleh, in Bamako

Reuters/Bamako  Mali’s interim President Dioncounda Traore has met for the first time with members of two northern Tuareg separatist groups, provoking anger among many in the country’s south as ethnic tensions rise ahead of a presidential poll on Sunday. The election is meant to unify the West African nation after a March 2012 coup allowed Tuareg rebels and their Al Qaeda-linked Islamist allies to seize the West African nation’s desert north. A French-led offensive earlier this year routed and scattered the Islamist fighters, though sporadic attacks continue. The Tuareg rebels, last month agreed to take their fighters off the streets in exchange for a promise of negotiations with the new government after the elections. “We spoke of peace and reconciliation,” Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assale, head of external relations for the Tuareg MNLA rebels, said following the closed-door meeting at the presidential residence late on Sunday. Representatives of the MNLA and its ally, the High Council for the Unity of Azawad, had been due to meet with military officials to review progress in implementing the preliminary peace deal signed in neighbouring Burkina Faso. But many in the capital Bamako viewed the unannounced visit with the president, during which Traore broke the Muslim holy month of Ramadan’s traditional daytime fast with the Tuareg leaders, as an affront. “Dioncounda may forgive them, but people will not,” said Bamako resident Youssouf Toure. Light-skinned Tuaregs have been blamed for attacks on black Malians in the northern city of Kidal and for the abduction of four election workers and a deputy mayor in another northern town last week. Two of the Tuareg delegation are named in arrest warrants for alleged crimes committed during the occupation of the north. “If the Malian justice ministry is searching for a presumed criminal, the president must use all means to deliver him (to the courts) not welcome them with a cup of tea in front of the cameras,” another resident of the capital Boubacar Mamadou said.  Voter registration cards went out yesterday in an atmosphere of calm in the northern Malian town where election officials were briefly kidnapped Saturday, one of the freed workers said. The five poll organisers and a local official had been at the town hall in Tessalit, near the Algerian border, to plan the distribution of the cards for Mali’s July 28 presidential election when they were taken by armed men.  “Today is calm in Tessalit and distribution of voter cards has begun,” said Ishmael Ag Mohamed, one of six kidnapped by the gunmen, who freed the group soon after.  Mohamed said they were abducted by the ethnic Tuareg separatist National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA).  “I recognised not only the car but also the local head of the MNLA,” he said.  Sunday’s polls are seen as vital to reuniting the country after a Tuareg uprising last year led to a military coup and a sweeping offensive by Islamists who captured the entire north before being flushed out by French and African troops.  Mohamed said he was optimistic that Tessalit, a desert town in the flashpoint Kidal region, birthplace of a Tuareg rebellion, could participate in the election.  An African source from the United Nations peacekeeping force in Kidal said the alleged mastermind of the kidnapping, Ag Baye Diknane, was questioned by UN and French forces but had to be released, because they had no mandate to make arrests.