Guardian

ISLAMIST rebels who seized the northern half of Mali along with other groups will meet today with West Africa’s top mediator for the crisis, a source close to the mediation team said.

The delegation from Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith), which arrived Friday in the capital of neighbouring Burkina Faso, will meet with Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) lead mediator for Mali, the source said yesterday.

However, Burkina Faso Foreign Minister Djibrill Bassole met the six Ansar Dine representatives yewsterday for what he described as “preliminary discussions”.

Compaore met on June 9 with a delegation from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), a Tuareg separatist group that together with Ansar Dine and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) capitalised on the power vacuum created by a March 22 military coup to seize Mali’s vast desert north.

ECOWAS has a 3,300-strong military force on standby to help reclaim Mali’s north, but the United Nations Security Council has twice this week refused to give its blessing to an armed intervention.

Meanwhile, an Al-Qaeda offshoot in Mali, which is holding seven Algerian hostages, said yesterday negotiations to free them were “advancing” and they had received medication for one of them who is diabetic.

On Tuesday, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) told AFP that talks to free the Algerians and three European hostages had resumed.

But their latest message made no reference to the two Spanish and Italian hostages.

“We have accepted medication for one of the Algerian hostages. He received medicine for diabetes. Now, the negotiations are advancing,” said Adnan Abu Walid Sahraoui, a MUJAO spokesman.

On May 16, the group threatened to kill one of the Spanish hostages if their demands were not met.

MUJAO first emerged last December, presenting themselves as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, when they claimed the kidnap of three aid workers – two Spanish and an Italian – from Tindouf, Algeria.

The group is demanding the release of two Sahrawis arrested by Mauritania for their role in the kidnapping, as well as 30 million euros ($40 million).

On April 5 the Algerian consul in the northern Malian town of Gao was kidnapped along with six colleagues and MUJAO claimed responsibility, demanding 15 million euros for their release.

At the end of April the group announced talks with Algiers had broken down and on May 8 they announced a 30-day deadline for their demands to be met.

MUJAO, along with AQIM have allied with Islamist group Ansar Dine (Defenders of Faith) who occupied a large part of northern Mali along with Tuareg rebels in March after a coup d’etat in Bamako.

The Islamists want to create a strict Islamic state while the Tuareg want independence for a region they see as their homeland.

Aside from the hostages held by MUJAO, AQIM is holding six French citizens kidnapped from Niger and Mali.