Sep. 30 (EUROPA PRESS) –
A delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has traveled to Mali to address the situation of the more than 45 Ivorian soldiers detained in July at the airport in the capital, Bamako, a situation that has strained bilateral relations.
The leader of the military junta and Malian transitional president, Assimi Goita, received the high-level delegation at the airport, headed by the presidents of Gambia and Ghana, Adama Barrow and Nana Akufo-Addo, respectively.
The delegation is also made up of the ECOWAS mediator for Mali, former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, and the Foreign Minister of Togo, Robert Dussey, who has also been mediating on this matter.
The Malian Presidency has posted photos of the delegation’s arrival on its Facebook social network account, which should have landed in Bamako on Tuesday, although the trip was postponed due to “schedule limitations” argued by the board.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, called on Monday for the “urgent release” of the Ivorian military, whom the Malian military junta has accused of being “mercenaries”, something firmly rejected from Yamoussoukro.
Côte d’Ivoire recently announced that it would transfer the case to ECOWAS and accused the Malian junta of “unacceptable blackmail” by allegedly demanding in return “the extradition of personalities who, according to them, benefit from Côte d’Ivoire’s protection in order to destabilize Mali”.
In response, Bamako criticized Yamoussoukro for taking the dispute to the regional body and warned against the “instrumentalization of ECOWAS by the Ivorian authorities to evade their responsibility to Mali.”
The Malian military junta had 49 soldiers from neighboring Côte d’Ivoire arrested as “mercenaries” when they landed in Bamako, although three were later released. The soldiers had the mission of relieving the troops that secure a base of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) at the capital’s airport, according to Yamoussoukro.
