ECOWAS to Hold Emergency Summit on Mali in Cote d'Ivoire

    2012-03-24 14:51:27     Xinhua       Web Editor: Liuyuanhui

The presidents from the Economic Community of the West African States (ECOWAS) will meet on Tuesday in Cote d'Ivoire's economic capital Abidjan for an emergency summit on the crisis in Mali, an official source has told Xinhua. According to the source, this will be an extraordinary summit that will enable leaders from this 15-member block to discuss events that took place in Mali, especially the "taking of power" by a group of soldiers calling themselves the National Committee for Redressement of Democracy and Restoration of the State (CNRDR). In mid-February, Cote d'Ivoire's President Alassane Ouattara became the ECOWAS president. A joint mission of this sub-regional organization and the African Union (AU) is tackling the issue. The Malian soldiers declared on Thursday that they had ended the regime of President Amadou Toumani Toure, whom they termed as "incompetent" and accused him of poorly handling the issue Tuareg rebels in the north. ECOWAS is emerging as a crisis-busting body in the region after helping end the rule of junta in Guinea and Niger and stabilize the situation in coup-prone Guinea-Bissau.