12/03/2012 23:14 GMT
OUAGADOUGOU, Dec 3, 2012 (AFP) - Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore, west Africa's chief mediator for the crisis in Mali, will hold his first joint meeting Tuesday with delegations from the Malian government and two rebel groups, his office said.
"The president will receive all the delegations together tomorrow at 4:00 pm (1600 GMT)," the presidency said Monday, after Compaore met representatives from Mali's transitional government.
Delegations from Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith), one of the Islamist groups that have seized Mali's north, and the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA), a rebel movement fighting for an independent state for the Tuareg people, are also in the Burkinabe capital for the talks.
Mali, once considered one of west Africa's most stable democracies, was plunged into chaos by a March 22 coup that created a power vacuum and enabled rebels to seize control of the country's north.
The MNLA initially fought alongside the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups now controlling the vast desert territory -- Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).
But the Islamists quickly sidelined the more secular Tuareg fighters and have set about imposing strict Islamic law in the north, destroying World Heritage shrines they consider blasphemous, stoning an unmarried couple to death and amputating hands of suspected thieves.
The Islamist occupation of the Texas-sized desert region has raised fears it could become a base for attacks on Africa and Europe.
Malian Foreign Minister Tieman Coulibaly, head of the government delegation, said authorities in Bamako were open to talks only if they kept the country intact and secular.
"We are acting under the Malian constitution. The republic is united and indivisible and secular, and in that respect separatist demands, attempts to install a religion and a law by force cannot thrive in Mali," Coulibaly told journalists.
He said chief mediator Compaore had "talked extensively with various sides as part of the preparatory meetings", adding: "I believe the moment has come to move on to another phase. That is why we are here."
"We will succeed," he added -- but also cautioned that Tuesday's talks would only explore "the possibility of beginning a dialogue".
Compaore's efforts to reach a negotiated solution with Ansar Dine -- a homegrown Malian group considered more moderate than its Islamist allies AQIM and MUJAO -- have met resistance in Mali.
On Saturday, an umbrella group of some 30 political parties and civil society groups published a "manifesto for the nation" rejecting any negotiations with Ansar Dine and the MNLA, and accusing Compaore of favouring the rebels and their "terrorist partners" in his role as mediator.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) resolved last month to deploy 3,300 troops to reclaim northern Mali if peaceful efforts failed to resolve the crisis.
But the UN Security Council is demanding stronger military plans to avoid a potential humanitarian disaster amid the fight to oust the Islamist groups.
Security sources said Monday that one of AQIM's former commanders, Algerian national Mokhtar Belmokhtar, had left Al-Qaeda's north African branch after being fired in October as one of its two top commanders in northern Mali.
"Belmokhtar couldn't stand being dismissed. He sent a letter to his superiors announcing he was no longer a member of AQIM," a Malian security source told AFP.
The one-eyed Belmokhtar, seen as a loose cannon within AQIM, had acquired a reputation as a smuggling baron in the region, and some members of AQIM had questioned his commitment to the group's puritanical brand of Islam.
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