West African mediator for Mali, Goodluck Jonathan, left Bamako on Sunday without reaching an agreement with the Malian junta on the duration of the transition and a date for elections, his delegation and Malian authorities said.
Jonathan, former president of Nigeria, had been on a mission since Friday in Bamako to continue discussions with the military-dominated authorities, with a view to a return to civilian rule in Mali, after two coups in August 2020 and May 2021.
The government of Mali, which has been under West African sanctions since January, says it has submitted a timetable for “elections with a 36-month deadline for the transition,” but “this proposal was not accepted by the West African mediator,” according to a statement issued Sunday evening after Jonathan’s departure.
The government said it had proposed “a new deadline of 29 months,” which the junta leader, Colonel Assimi Goïta, “in a last-ditch effort to reach a realistic compromise (…) has reduced to 24 months.
But “this new deadline, which the Malian authorities consider unavoidable, did not meet with the approval of the mediator and his delegation, who remained in their position,” the government added.
The last proposal made by the junta to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), during the organization’s last summit on the issue in early February in Accra, was a four-year transition.
The regional organization had heavily sanctioned in January the junta of Colonel Goïta, brought to the head of Mali by a first coup d’état in August 2020 and enthroned president “of the transition” following a second putsch in May 2021.
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