2023-08-02 23:29:23
The United States on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of its non-essential personnel at the embassy in Niamey, Nigerfollowing the putschist military coup once morest Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, announced the State Department.
“Because of this development, the State Department has ordered the departure of non-essential government employees at the embassy” as well as their families, specifies a notice published Wednesday evening on its website.
At the same time, the State Department raised its alert level for Niger from 3 to 4, advising any American national not to travel to the country due to the security situation there. He said he reduced activities at the US Embassy in Niamey and ceased all daily operations, stressing that they can only intervene in an emergency.
1,000 American soldiers in the Sahel
A number of American citizens boarded French and Italian repatriation flights Wednesday from Niamey, but the United States did not order any general evacuation of their nationals.
The United States strongly condemned the overthrow of President Bazoum but, unlike France and other European countries, had not so far ordered evacuations or suspended aid to Niger, which numbers in the hundreds millions of dollars.
Asked during a press briefing on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there were no indications of threats once morest Americans in Niger or American installations like the embassy. “Overall, the situation in Niamey remains calm, but it is fluid,” he said. The United States also has some 1,000 soldiers deployed in the country as part of the fight once morest jihadist groups in the Sahel.
“No objective reason” for French nationals to leave Niger, according to the junta
The General Abdourahamane Tchianiwho took power in Niamey at the head of putschist soldiers, estimated on Wednesday that the French “have no objective reason to leave Niger”, at a time when several hundred of them are being evacuated by Paris.
French nationals “have never been the object of the slightest threat” and they have “no objective reason to leave Niger”, General Tchiani declared in a televised speech on the eve of the feast of the independence of the country, former French colony.
He denounced “the use of military force” during the demonstration on Sunday in Niamey in front of the French embassy where tear gas and “weapons”, according to the Nigerien military, were used to disperse the crowd. Paris had denied the use of “lethal means”.
Sanctions rejected “en bloc”
Regarding the sanctions imposed by the leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and their threat to use force, he said he rejected them “en bloc” and refused “any threat”. “The ruling CNSP (National Council for the Safeguarding of the Fatherland) rejects these sanctions outright and refuses to give in to any threat from anywhere,” he said. “We refuse any interference in the internal affairs of Niger,” he added.
According to him, “these sanctions are cynical and iniquitous”, aim to “humiliate the FDS (Defence and Security Forces), Niger and its people” and to make “the situation untenable and the country ungovernable”. “Nowhere in this contemptuous and belligerent attitude did the ‘West African’ leaders take into account the sovereignty of our country,” he said.
ECOWAS ordered an economic blockade of Niger, deciding the “immediate” suspension of “all commercial and financial transactions” with Niger and threatened to use “force” if President Mohamed Bazoum, overthrown on July 26, was not reinstated within seven days.
General Tchiani reiterated that it was mainly because of the deterioration in security in Niger, which was plagued by jihadist violence, that the military had seized power, saying: “it is the life of Nigeriens and of Niger that is question “.
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