“An unacceptable coup”: European leaders have “condemned in the strongest possible terms the arrest of the president of Mali and his prime minister,” Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday at the end of a European summit. An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council will be held Wednesday evening behind closed doors.
“We are ready, in the coming hours, if the situation is not clarified, to take targeted sanctions” against the protagonists, said Emmanuel Macron at a press conference. Mali’s strongman, Colonel Assimi Goïta, said Tuesday that he had relieved the transitional president and prime minister of their prerogatives, guilty according to him of attempted “sabotage”, in what looks like a second putsch in nine months.
“We have condemned in the strongest terms the arrest of the president of the transition, his Prime Minister and their collaborators,” reported Emmanuel Macron. “What was conducted by the military coup plotters is an unacceptable coup d’état within the coup d’état, which calls for our immediate condemnation,” the French president said.
In a statement of recovery despite the dismay caused among Malians and widespread international condemnation, Colonel Goïta blamed President Bah N’Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane for forming a new government without consulting him, despite being in charge of defense and security, crucial areas in the troubled country.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, minutes before Emmanuel Macron, told the National Assembly that France was requesting an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. It “condemns in the strongest terms this coup”, “demands the release of the authorities” and “the immediate resumption of the normal course of the transition,” said Le Drian.
But the positioning of France and the AU raises questions. A few weeks earlier, Paris and Addis Ababa had been much less harsh on the Chadian military transition. This undermines their credibility, according to Niagale Bagayoko, president of the African Security Sector Network. “The decision not to condemn the installation of the military committee in power in Chad violates a number of fundamental principles. I fear that this decision has set a precedent that suggests that in reality, multilateral bodies that are guarantors of democracy and the rule of law cannot take a firm stand on the rules they are supposed to defend. “