Lamamra urges Mali partners to help removing obstacles

Minister of State, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Ramtane Lamamra urged all the Mali partners to provide this country with all the help so it can remove the obstacles that can hamper the application of the Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in this country.
“All the partners of Mali are today challenged to urgently assist this country, financially and in the field of the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking. This is urgent and vital for Mali,” Lamamra said in an interview with APS, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Agreement signing.
Those partners are challenged because of the “serious difficulties, which may hugely jeopardise or slow the culmination of the peace and the national reconciliation process” in Mali, said the minister, pointing out that the “process of the Agreement application is faced with difficulties which slow the pace of its progress and weaken the outcomes.”
Among those difficulties, the minister mentioned the “lack of funds necessary for the achievement of projects and programmes planned under the Agreement, the continual insecurity which hampers the relaunch of development actions, in particular in the North of Mali,” he said.
He has also mentioned the “threats related to persistence of terrorism and drug trafficking, the complexity of procedures of the disbursement of the already acquired funding and the slowness in the decision-making process for the implementation of the measures stipulated in the Agreement.”
However, for the Algerian foreign Minister, “the great conviction, now shared by all Malian parties that the Agreement and its implementation, in good faith and with sincerity, are the ideal way to build peace and achieving economic development in Mali, has contributed significantly to raising obstacles and stimulated the desire of all to move forward in this salutary initiative.”