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Islamists gain ground in troubled Mali as junta flounders

03 April 2012 22:36 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Maliâ€™s junta brushed off calls to give up power on Tuesday as world powers sounded the alarm and Islamists tightened their grip on the north, ordering women to wear veils in storied Timbuktu, APA reports quoting AFP.

Feeling the bite of mounting sanctions and pressure from all sides, the soldiers who seized power on March 22 proposed a national meeting on Thursday and dispatched a team to Nigeria for talks on an exit from the growing crisis.

Since the coup, ostensibly over governmentâ€™s failure to stamp out a northern rebellion, the junta has lost over half the countryâ€™s territory -- an area the size of France -- in a matter of days to the rebel juggernaut.

Islamists seized control of the ancient trading hub Timbuktu over the weekend alongside Tuareg rebels and have since chased out their allies and declared to residents and religious leaders that they were imposing sharia law.

This sparked alarm abroad ahead of an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting on Mali, with Paris expressing concern over the Islamist threat in a country considered a democratic success until the coup.

The Tuareg rebels want an independent state while Ansar Dine which has seized Timbuktu wants to impose Islamic law and has linked up with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told AFP the two were "closely tied" and Ansar Dineâ€™s "goals are not clear, but it may be to install an Islamic regime across the whole of Mali."

Three of the four leaders of Al-Qaedaâ€™s north Africa branch, Abou Zeid, Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Yahya Abou Al-Hammam, were in Timbuktu on Tuesday, security and religious sources in the city said.

Residents reported women in the normally secular city that hosted a major music festival in January were on Tuesday wearing headscarves.

A day after being slapped with sanctions by its neighbours, Maliâ€™s embattled military rulers came under travel bans and an asset freeze from the African Union for failing to restore constitutional order.

The 15-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) already cut off the landlocked country which depends heavily on the import of fuel, also freezing access to its bank account based in Dakar.

In Bamako, long lines formed at petrol stations as panic set in over the impact of the sanctions.

"We hear there is an embargo, we are afraid of shortages so we are taking precautions," said a youth who wanted to fill half a dozen empty bottles.

The junta on Tuesday sent a delegation to Nigeria, where ECOWAS officials could offer the putschists amnesty in exchange for relinquishing power, a foreign ministry source in Abuja said. However, it appeared a deal was not reached.

Coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo said in Bamako the junta wanted to prosecute ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure for "high treason and financial wrongdoing."

As the military junta struggled with the intensifying crisis, armed Islamists in the north handed out food and supplies that they seized from humanitarian organisations to residents of Timbuktu, sources said.

Officials from the regional food security office linked to the agriculture ministry and local Red Cross confirmed on condition of anonymity that the goods being distributed were forcibly taken from their stocks.

The fighting in northern Mali began in mid-January by the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA), which wants independence for its homeland in the northern triangle of the bow-tie shaped nation.

The Islamist Ansar Dine under notorious commander Iyad Ag Ghaly, wants to implement sharia law in the mostly Muslim but secular state.

A powerful player in northern Mali, Ag Ghaly and his fighters have placed their black jihadist flag around Timbuktu, which was a leading trading and intellectual capital up until the 16th century.

"Last night Iyad Ag Ghaly met the townâ€™s Imams (religious leaders). He explained he has not come for independence but to apply Islamic law," said the civil servant Thiam.

The UN cultural agency UNESCO called on the Malian authorities and on the warring factions to respect the desert countryâ€™s heritage and the "outstanding architectural wonders" in Timbuktu, including ancient manuscripts and earthen buildings such as a nearly 700-year old mosque.

Paris said Tuesday the Tuareg rebels were approaching the central town of Mopti where hundreds fled in panic on Monday as they saw soldiers fleeing their posts amid the rebel advance.

More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes by the fighting and aid groups have warned that the combination of civil war and drought could lead to one of the continentâ€™s worst humanitarian emergencies.