Tuareg intermediaries negotiate release of European hostages

The Malian government is using Tuareg tribesman as intermediaries to try and negotiate the release of 15 European hostages held by Islamic militants who have brought them into the country from neighbouring Algeria, a military source said on Friday. President Amadou Toumani Toure confirmed implicitly on Thursday that the hostages had been brought into Mali by their kidnappers. "Mali will solve this problem pacifically," he told reporters at a news conference in response to a barrage of questions on the matter which he was loath to answer in detail. Malian government officials have until now been tightlipped about persistent reports that the Salafist Group for Combat and Preaching (GSPC) of southern Algeria brought the hostages into Mali last week. The military source told IRIN that the hostages - 10 Germans, four Swiss and one Dutchman - were being held in the arid Adrar des Iforas hills of eastern Mali near the frontier with Algeria. He said the government was using Iyad Ag Agaly, a Tuareg tribal leader who played a prominent role in the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali from 1990 to 1996 as a go-between to try and secure their release. The source explained that the Tuaregs of northern Mali have close family, cultural and trade links with the tribesman from southern Algeria who kidapped the European tourists in February and March this year. They were therefore more likely to be able to win their confidence in negotiations, he stressed. Smuggling and banditry is rife along the desert border between Mali and Algeria and there is a brisk trade in stolen goods in the area. In June, Algerian secured the release of 17 European toursists who had been kidnapped by the GSPC. The circumstances of their liberation were never fully explained. The fact that Mali's government is able to use the former Tuareg rebels to negotiate the release of this second group of hostages is a measure of the reconciliation that has been achieved since the Tuareg rebellion ended seven years ago. The Tuaregs, who account for a small minority of Mali's 12 million inhabitants, are light-skinned nomadic people with strong links to the Arab world who mainly live in the desert north of the country. They fought the government of now-imprisoned President Moussa Traore who had accused them of wanting to establish a secessionist state. The Tuaregs accused Moussa Traore's government of neglecting their region. However, since the signing of an Algerian--brokered peace agreement seven years ago, more has been spent on the development of the north and Tuaregs have been brought more into the mainstream of national life. Mali's current prime minister,Ahmed Mohamed Ag Hamani, is the first Tuareg to occupy the post.