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WAR

France: UN ‘to vote’ on Mali force next month

The United Nations is likely to vote next month on a peacekeeping force for Mali, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced this week.

France: UN 'to vote' on Mali force next month
Photo: AFP

"We will move from the current framework… to a new diplomatic set-up, a peacekeeping operation which would probably be voted in April and implemented two months later," he told the National Assembly's foreign affairs committee.

On Tuesday Fabius said the UN force could comprise up to 10,000 troops.

Fabius said the operation "will be overseen by the UN and be funded by the UN, something which will obviously have a number of consequences for us".

Up until now, France has borne the brunt of the costs linked to its military involvement in Mali as well as the bulk of expenses related to Chad's 2,000-man contingent there.

At the end of last month, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the operation would soon have cost France more than €100 million ($130 million).

The current African force AFISMA is composed of about 6,300 soldiers and is supposed to be taking over from French soldiers. Paris is due to scale back operations in Mali next month.

"French troops were not meant to stay in Mali forever", Fabius reiterated, but said that France also in the future will be present there "in one way or another".

French forces launched a surprise intervention on January 11th in a bid to stop Al Qaeda-linked fighters who had controlled northern Mali since April 2012 from moving southward and threatening the capital Bamako.

Islamist groups have largely been forced out of the main cities in the north and are now waging a guerrilla war against French, Malian and other troops seeking to help the government assert its control over the entire territory.

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MILITARY

Denmark to deploy special forces to Mali in 2022

Denmark plans to deploy about 100 special forces to Mali early next year to boost the elite anti-jihadist European task force Takuba headed by France, the government announced Thursday.

Denmark to deploy special forces to Mali in 2022
A UN aircraft about to depart Denmark for Mali in 2019. File photo: Henning Bagger/Ritzau Scanpix

“The terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda remainssignificant,” the foreign and defence ministries said in a joint statement.

“They want to create a hub in West Africa for their extremist regime… and we cannot allow that to happen,” they added.

The Danish contingent, which apart from the special forces will also include top level military officers and surgeons, will be deployed at the beginning of 2022, the ministries said.

Copenhagen also plans to send a military transport plane to assist the UN mission in Mali, MINUSMA.

The French-led Takuba multinational force, launched in March 2020, has already seen Czech, Swedish and Estonian troops deployed in the region but France has struggled to obtain significant support from its larger EU partners.

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