International meet to open on north Mali intervention

African and European leaders will meet in Bamako Friday to work on plans for a military intervention to seize back Mali's desert north from armed Islamists who control the region. Rebels from the Al-Qaeda-allied group Ansar Dine (Defenders of the Faith) on Thursday used pickaxes and other tools to destroy Muslin saints' tombs in the ancient city of Timbuktu, their latest attack on its cultural treasures. Since seizing control of Mali's north in the chaos following a March coup, several Islamist groups have imposed strict sharia law. They have arrested unveiled women, stoned an unmarried couple to death and amputated the limbs of suspected thieves, according to residents and rights groups. The global community has been in talks to intervene, with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) saying it has 3,000 troops on standby for the purpose. Friday's summit comes a week after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution asking West African nations to speed up preparations for the intervention, giving them 45 days to lay out detailed plans. Among those expected at the meeting are new African Union commission chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and Mali's interim president Dioncounda Traore. The number-two EU diplomat Pierre Vimont, France's envoy to the Sahel Jean Felix-Paganon, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy for the region, former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, will also take part. Representatives from ECOWAS countries, the only ones expected to send troops to Mali, will begin laying out their strategy for the intervention. They will set out their military needs and take note of what ammunition and ground troops Mali has available, according to Western diplomatic sources.