Mali's foreign affairs minister on Tuesday said the military government would exercise its right to self-defense if France continued to undermine the West African country's sovereignty and national security.
Speaking at a United
Nations Security Council briefing on Mali in
New York, Minister Abdoulaye Diop repeated allegations that France had
violated its airspace and delivered arms to Islamist militants that have
been waging an offensive in northern Mali for the past decade.
France has denied this. Its
relations with Mali have soured since an August 2020 coup and it is
withdrawing troops sent in 2013 to help fight the insurgency.
"There needs to be a
specific meeting of the Security Council which will make it possible for
us to bring to light evidence regarding duplicitous acts, acts of
espionage and acts of destabilization waged by France," Diop said.
"The government of Mali
reserves the right to exercise its right to self-defence… if France
continues to undermine the sovereignty of our country and to undermine its
territorial integrity and its national security," he added.
France's representative denied
the "defamatory" accusations, defended its intervention in Mali
as fully transparent and said the country had never violated any airspace.
Diop also denied human rights
violations by the Malian army reported by the U.N. and
other groups.
Several reports, including the
latest U.N. Secretary-General assessment, accuse Malian
soldiers and Russian mercenaries collaborating with the
military government of abusing and killing civilians suspected of
colluding with jihadists.
Diop called the allegations
"unfounded" and warned against "instrumentalizing"
human rights issues.
He said the departure of
hundreds of foreign troops would not create a security vacuum.
Other European countries have
ended their military involvement in Mali this year, often citing the
junta's collaboration with Russian fighters.
Islamist militants have since
advanced further into eastern Mali, seizing territory and killing hundreds
of civilians as thousands more fled.
Four U.N. peacekeepers were
killed in a separate attack in the north of the country on Monday.
Mali has faced instability
since 2012, when Islamist militants hijacked a Tuareg rebellion in the
north. France intervened to help push them out. But the militants -some
with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State - have since regrouped and spread
across the Sahel and further south towards coastal states. - Reuters
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