Mali aid meet opens with pledge to avoid past mistakes
(BRUSSELS) - International donors pledged Wednesday to help all sides in Mali avoid the mistakes of the past which led to crisis and war as they put together an aid package worth two billion euros ($2.6 billion).
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the meeting that everyone "had to look at the causes of the crisis" which saw the country lose its north to Islamist rebels and France intervene militarily.
"The war is being won. Now we have to secure the peace," Fabius said, stressing the need for unity in a new Mali for all Malians, north and south.
He said the crisis largely reflected economic and political failures in Mali which must be remedied.
Aid granted would be tied to an open and transparent Mali, with political reconciliation and democracy key elements in restoring stability to the country and to the wider Sahel region.
"That is why the elections must take place on the date indicated" of July 28, Fabius said. "You cannot separate (the country's development) from the democratic process."
Mali Foreign Minister Tieman Hubert Coulibaly said the crisis "has taught us a lot" and showed that "we need to live and work together" in Mali.
Other delegates made similar points, highlighting the importance of the July polls in restoring democratic rule after a military coup in 2012 paved the way for Islamist rebels to seize control of northern Mali.
Mali President Dioncounda Traore pledged Tuesday that the July poll would go ahead but the country's election commission has warned that that might be too soon.
Romano Prodi, former Italian prime minister and now UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Envoy for the Sahel, said "much progress has been made" in Mali but the focus has to be on implementation of the aid programme and the polls.
The new government will have to lead Mali out of a crisis that has crippled the country since Tuareg tribes -- who have long felt marginalised by Bamako -- launched a fresh rebellion in January 2012 for independence of the north.
That revolt led to the military coup which in turn opened the way for the Tuareg and their hardline Islamist allies to seize key northern cities.
However the Tuareg were quickly sidelined and the extremists chased them out, imposing a brutal form of sharia law in the cities under their control.
France, Mali's former colonial power, sent in troops in January to fight the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels who were then advancing on the capital Bamako, pushing them back.
Wednesday's conference is being co-hosted by the European Union and French President Francois Hollande, with some 100 delegations in all.
European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso announced Tuesday after meeting Traore that the EU would contribute 520 million euros while diplomatic sources said France would offer some 280 million euros.
The funds targeted at the conference will cover about 45 percent of the costs of a reconstruction plan drawn up for this year and next by Bamako.
EU officials say the war has resulted in some 500,000 refugees, with three quarters of them displaced to the southern part of the country.
Some two million people have no secure food supply while 600,000 children are threatened by malnutrition, with conditions on the ground difficult for providing aid.
"Mali really needs the money to re-establish basic services such as water, electricity, health and administration, especially in the northern areas," one EU official said.
Besides humanitarian aid, the EU is training Mali's ramshackle armed forces to bring them up to standard on both their military role and responsibilities to civil society.
France has begun withdrawing its 4,500 troops deployed in Mali and handing over the reins to a 6,300-strong African force, the International Mission for Support to Mali (MISMA).
Paris has said about 1,000 soldiers will remain in Mali beyond this year to back up a UN force that is to replace MISMA.
This UN force of 12,600 peacekeepers, to be responsible for stabilising the north, will be phased in gradually from July.