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NIAMEY: The African Union demanded Niger’s army “return to their barracks and restore constitutional authority” inside 15 days because the EU intensified stress on the coup leaders Saturday by suspending safety cooperation with the strife-hit nation. Normal Abdourahamane Tiani, head of the Presidential Guard since 2011, appeared on state tv on Friday to declare himself the troubled West African nation’s new chief. His forces have confined democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum to his official residence within the capital Niamey since Wednesday, in a putsch Tiani offered as a response to “the degradation of the safety scenario” linked to militant bloodshed.
The African Union and the European Union joined the refrain of worldwide condemnation of the ability seize, the most recent to strike the Sahel area. Niger’s neighbors Mali and Burkina Faso have each undergone two army coups since 2020, fueled by anger at a failure to quash long-running insurgencies by jihadists linked to the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda. The AU’s Peace and Safety Council “calls for the army personnel to instantly and unconditionally return to their barracks and restore constitutional authority, inside a most interval of fifteen (15) days,” it stated in a communique following a gathering Friday on the coup.
It “condemns within the strongest phrases doable” the overthrow of the elected authorities and expressed deep concern over the “alarming resurgence” of army coups in Africa. The EU’s diplomatic chief Josep Borrell on Saturday stated the bloc wouldn’t acknowledge the putschists and introduced the suspension of safety cooperation with Niger. “The European Union doesn’t acknowledge and won’t acknowledge the authorities from the putsch in Niger,” Borrell stated in a press release. “All cooperation within the safety subject is suspended indefinitely with speedy impact” along with the top to budgetary help, he added.
Bazoum “stays the one respectable president of Niger”, the assertion stated, calling for his speedy launch and holding the coup leaders to account for the security of the president and his household. Borrell stated the EU was able to assist future choices taken by West Africa’s regional bloc, “together with the adoption of sanctions”. Leaders from the Financial Group of West African States will meet on Sunday in Abuja to debate the coup, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu stated. French President Emmanuel Macron was attributable to chair a gathering of his Defence and Nationwide Safety Council on the coup on Saturday afternoon, the presidency stated.
France, Niger’s former colonial energy, has 1,500 troopers within the nation. America has round 1,000 troops on the bottom. Tiani, 59, has shunned the limelight regardless of a stellar army profession which has seen him lead the 700-member presidential guard since 2011. He’s a staunch ally of former president Mahamadou Issoufou, Bazoum’s predecessor, who appointed him head of the presidential guard. Sources near Bazoum informed AFP that he had been contemplating changing Tiani as the pinnacle of the elite unit.
Tiani in the meantime started shunning “official ceremonies and actions” of the president and despatched his deputy Colonel Ibroh Amadou Bacharou, additionally a member of the brand new junta, to characterize him, one supply near Bazoum stated. Landlocked Niger is among the world’s poorest nations, usually rating final within the UN’s Human Growth Index, regardless of huge deposits of uranium. It has had a turbulent political historical past since gaining independence in 1960, with 4 coups in addition to quite a few different makes an attempt — together with two beforehand towards Bazoum. The 63-year-old has been one in every of a dwindling group of elected presidents and pro-Western leaders within the Sahel as juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso flip away from conventional allies and in direction of Russia. – AFP
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