#Mali : Mali has asked France to review bilateral defense agreements, amid growing tensions between Bamako and Paris, a French diplomatic source told AFP on Monday.
Malian Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maïga spoke on Saturday of the need to review these agreements.
“We want to reread the unbalanced agreements that make us a state that cannot even fly over its territory without authorization from France,” he said on national television.
The head of Malian diplomacy Abdoulaye Diop then confirmed to the France 24 news channel that Bamako had taken steps in this direction.
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“Mali has requested the revision of the Treaty on defense which binds it to #France. The amendments have been formally submitted,” he told journalist Wassim Nasr, who retweeted his remarks.
The French military operation Serval launched in January 2013 against the jihadists in Mali, which later became Barkhane, is governed by an intergovernmental agreement of March 2013, as well as an additional protocol.
This request for revision adds to a series of tensions between Bamako and Paris, against the backdrop of the installation of mercenaries from the Wagner group in Mali and the reorganization of the French military presence in this country.
France and the Europeans, also engaged in the anti-jihadist fight in Mali, said on Friday that they were ready to stay there “but not at any price”.
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Last week, the junta in power in Bamako since the August 2020 putsch closed its borders to the States of the Organization of West African States (ECOWAS), after the latter had done the same to sanction the project of the soldiers to remain at the head of the country for several years without elections.
Since then, the question has been raised of the freedom of movement of military aircraft entering or leaving the airspace from or to the West African states in question, in particular those of Minusma and France.
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