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Ammon News - By Al Arabiya with agencies

The U.N. Security Council could vote Thursday on a resolution allowing the deployment of an African force in Mali to prepare an offensive against Al-Qaeda linked militants, AFP reported diplomats as saying.

France was expected to send a new version of its resolution on Mali late Wednesday to the other 14 members of the council.

It has been involved in weeks of talks with the United States on Mali. U.S. diplomats expressed doubts that a proposed West African force will be tough enough for the desert battle against fighters from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its offshoot the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO).

The Islamists and separatist rebels seized on a military coup in Mali in March to take over the northern half of the country.

France and the United States have sought to minimize their differences in recent days and diplomats said there could be a vote Thursday on a resolution could see the international force authorized in two stages.

The draft would call for Mali’s government to fully restore constitutional order and start talks with Tuareg separatist rebels in the north, diplomats said.

The resolution would allow international help to rebuild the Mali military and train a force to re-conquer the north of the country, a U.N. diplomat said.

But the U.N. Security Council would first have to be “satisfied” that the force is ready for an operation before it could be sent into battle.

Military planners and diplomats have said no offensive in northern Mali would be ready until late 2013.

The financing of the operation also remains vague. Diplomats expect the European Union to pay for the initial training and the resolution would call on U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon to propose options to back a logistics package for the force.

The military operation is expected to cost at least $200 million a year, according to diplomats.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) says it has 3,300 troops from member countries ready to go to Mali. European countries and the United States, who fear Mali becoming a terrorist safe haven, have offered logistical support and training.



President says extremists not foreigners


Meanwhile, Mali’s president acknowledged Wednesday that the Islamist group carrying out public executions and amputations in the country’s north is made up mostly of Malians and not foreign fighters, a declaration that appears aimed at fostering dialogue with the group, the Associated Press reported.

The comments mark the first time Mali’s leader has acknowledged that the Ansar Dine group includes mostly Malians. Previously the government had maintained the group included militants from al-Qaeda’s North Africa branch and other foreigners who invaded Mali in the wake of a coup in March.

On Wednesday, though, President Dioncounda Traore said Ansar Dine fighters “are mainly made up of our fellow countrymen.”

He also noted the presence in northern Mali of Nigerian terror group Boko Haram and Qaeda’s North Africa branch, or AQIM, in the area, which has known links to Ansar Dine.

Ansar Dine, or “Defenders of the Faith,” controls the towns of Kidal and Timbuktu in northern Mali, where they have imposed a strict form of Islamic law known as Shariah there.

They’ve stoned to death a couple accused of adultery and accused thieves have had their hands hacked off hacked off. Ansar Dine also has recruited children as young as 12 into their ranks and forced women to wear head-to-toe veils.