Moscow - Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop has accused France of arming terrorists and called for the UN Security Council to intervene, in a letter obtained by state-run French radio RFI.
Ties between France and its former colony in western Africa soured after Malian military took over power in 2020. France ended its military presence in Mali on Monday.
Diop reportedly said in a letter to the UNSC that Mali’s colonial master had repeatedly violated its airspace to spy on Malian armed forces and airdrop weapons and munitions to “terrorist groups”.
French drones, helicopters and fighter jets entered Malian airspace some 50 times since January without the permission of the Malian transitional government, the diplomat said.
This comes several days after Mali accused the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, a terror group banned in Russia, of killing 42 people in an attack on the town of Tessit. It said “recording of clandestine overflight operations clearly shows that terrorists benefited from major support, including external expertise.”
The French embassy in Mali denied the accusations in a series of tweets on Wednesday, saying that France “intervened in Mali between 2013 and 2022 to fight against terrorist groups, at the request of Malian authorities” and has never “supported, directly or indirectly, these terrorist groups”.
The French first intervened in Mali in 2013 after northern Mali was taken over by Islamist militants in 2012.
Sputnik