BAMAKO, Mali
Mali summoned the Algerian ambassador on Wednesday following what it called “interference” and “unfriendly acts,” accusing the diplomat of holding meetings with Tuareg separatists without involving Bamako, the foreign ministry said.
Algeria is the main mediator
in efforts to return peace to northern Mali following an agreement signed in
2015 between the Malian government and predominantly Tuareg armed groups.
The Algerian ambassador was
summoned “to raise a strong protest” from Mali “following recent unfriendly
acts by the Algerian authorities, under the guise of the peace process in
Mali,” the ministry said in a statement.
Bamako criticized “recurrent
meetings, at the highest levels in Algeria, and without the slightest
information or involvement of the Malian authorities... with people known for
their hostility to the Malian government.”
The Malian government sees
“these acts as constituting interference in Mali’s internal affairs” which “are
likely to damage good relations” with Algiers, the statement said.
Mali is in the throes of an
11-year-old security crisis and the Sahel country has been ruled by the
military since August 2020.
Fighting between the
separatists and Mali government troops broke out again in August after eight
years of calm as both sides scrambled to fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal
of UN peacekeepers.
Some leaders of Tuareg
separatist groups currently live in Algeria, according to the heads of their
movements.
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