2023-08-07 23:05:27
In view of the threat of military escalation in Niger, US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland made a surprise trip to the capital of the West African country. She is staying in Niamey, Nuland said in a telephone briefing on Tuesday evening (local time). She met top junta officials and “clarified what is at stake in our relationship with Niger.” The US would push for a negotiated solution in Niger.
The talks were “extraordinarily open and sometimes difficult,” said Nuland. She had met with the army leadership. However, she was denied a meeting with the self-declared President Abdourahamane Tiani and one with the deposed President Mohamed Bazoum. However, the meetings “opened the door for further talks”.
Nuland’s visit came a few hours following an ultimatum from the West African community of states ECOWAS to the putschists to restore constitutional order expired. The international community led by Nigeria had threatened military intervention if the junta failed to meet the demand. The heads of state and government of the ECOWAS countries are now to meet in Nigeria’s capital Abuja on Thursday to discuss further steps.
The junta has the support of neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, whose membership in ECOWAS has been suspended. Algeria has also spoken out clearly once morest military intervention in Niger. On the other hand, the European Union backed ECOWAS.
Meanwhile, the putschists tried to consolidate their power by appointing a prime minister. . In a statement read on television late Monday night, a spokesman for the military junta named economist Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine as the new prime minister. Lamine Zeine used to be Economics and Finance Minister in the cabinet of ex-President Mamadou Tandja, who was ousted in 2010, and most recently worked as an economist for the African Development Bank in Chad, according to a Nigerien media report.
In the bitterly poor country with around 26 million inhabitants, the military removed the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum from power at the end of July and suspended the constitution. Under Bazoum, Niger was one of the West’s last strategic partners in the fight once morest the advance of Islamist terrorists in the Sahel.
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