The UN Security Council has called for a swift deployment of foreign troops to Mali to rein in ultra-conservative armed groups in charge of the country’s north. The call on Friday comes as the fighters are vowing to capture more territory in the West African nation. Diplomats at the UN in New York said Dioncounda Traore, Mali’s interim president, had appealed to Paris and UN chief Ban Ki-moon for help. Citing a letter from the president, Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said: “It basically said: ‘Help – France’.” France is Mali’s former colonial ruler and the two countries maintain bilateral relations. Francois Hollande, the French president, told a meeting of diplomats in Paris on Thursday his country would respond urgently to Mali’s appeal, but would only act under the auspices of the UN. “They are trying to deliver a fatal blow to the very existence of this country,” Hollande said of the Islamist groups that control the north of Mali. “France, like its African partners and the whole of the international community, cannot accept this.” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Paris, said French military officials would neither confirm nor deny reports that French troops had already arrived in Mali. “We did hear from a spokesman with ECOWAS, the bloc of West African nations, that the UN has endorsed to go in with a military force into Mali.
