Hollande gets hero’s welcome in a Mali fearful of future
MALI: President Francois Hollande received a rapturous welcome
in Mali on Saturday as he promised that France would stay as long as
necessary to continue the fight against Islamist rebels in the country's
north.
As troops worked to secure Kidal, the last bastion of radicals who
occupied the vast desert north for 10 months before the French army's
surprise intervention, Hollande told Malians it was time for Africans to
take the lead but that France would not abandon them.
“Terrorism has been pushed back, it has been chased away, but it has
not been defeated yet,” said Hollande, whose decision to intervene in
Mali three weeks ago won him accolades in the former French colony.
“France will stay by your side as long as necessary, as long as it
takes for Africans themselves... to replace us,” he told a large crowd
in the capital, Bamako, at a monument commemorating Mali's independence
from France.
Earlier, in the fabled city of Timbuktu, thousands gathered in the
central square and danced to the beat of drums -- a forbidden activity
during the extremists' occupation -- to welcome the French leader, with
shouts of “Vive la France! Long Live Hollande!” Mali's interim president
Dioncounda Traore thanked his counterpart for the French troops'
“efficiency”, which he said had allowed the north to be freed from
“barbarity and obscurantism”.
Hollande was offered a young camel draped in a French flag as he
toured the city.
“The women of Timbuktu will thank Francois Hollande forever,” said
53-year-old Fanta Diarra Toure.
“We must tell him that he has cut down the tree but still has to tear
up its roots.” Hollande and Traore toured Timbuktu's 700-year-old mud
mosque of Djingareyber and the Ahmed Baba library for ancient
manuscripts.
AFP |