West African leaders kicked off a virtual summit on Mali’s deepening political crisis on Monday, officials said, after two efforts at mediation this month ended inconclusively.
Presidents of the 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), of which Mali is a member, are discussing ways to defuse tensions between the opposition and President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
“The meeting has started,” a source close to ECOWAS said. A source close to the Malian president confirmed that the talks had begun.
Anti-Keita protests on July 10 spiralled into clashes, leaving 11 dead in the worst bout of political unrest Mali has seen in years.
Keita has been in power since 2013, winning elections in which he posed as national saviour in the face of a regional rebellion.
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Since then, the country’s problems have escalated, and anger is flaring.
The 75-year-old president is dogged by a jihadist insurgency, a deep economic crisis and accusations that the outcome of long-delayed legislative elections, held in March and April, was skewed.
Last month, a coalition of various groups came together behind the figurehead of Mahmoud Dicko, a conservative Saudi-trained imam who has long been a scourge of Keita’s government.
Successive protests by the opposition June 5 Movement have rattled Keita’s grip, stirring fears among neighbours that the notoriously volatile state could spiral into chaos.
First item on Monday’s agenda was a report on a mediation mission last Thursday led by the current ECOWAS chair, President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger.
Issoufou, flanked for the one-day trip to Bamako by the presidents of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Senegal, failed to win over the opposition to a plan for easing the crisis.
ECOWAS, on July 19, put forward a scheme to set up a government of national unity and establish a new Constitutional Court that would resolve the election row.
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