DAKAR (Reuters) – The leader of al Qaeda’s North African wing has put his group’s fighters in Mali’s north at the disposal of Ansar Dine rebels seeking to impose Islamic law across the West African state, the first public comments officially linking to two groups.

Fighters should impose sharia only gradually and look to collaborate, not clash, with separatist rebels also operating in Mali’s north, the head of AQIM said in speech posted on the internet and translated by the SITE jihadist monitoring service.

The comments by Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, also known as Abdelmalek Droukdel, firm up reports of cooperation between al Qaeda and Iyad Ag Ghali’s Ansar Dine rebels, who swept across Mali’s north in an awkward alliance with Tuareg rebels seeking to create an independent desert state called Azawad.

The ties will also add to concerns over deepening lawlessness across the Sahara and complicate regional efforts to find a negotiated solution to the rebellion in Mali, whose capital has been thrust into chaos since a March 22 coup.

Droukdel called on AQIM fighters to “practice all their field activities concerning the sharia-implementation project in the Azawad region under the cover of (Ansar Dine) and keep the cover of (AQIM) limited to our activities in the global jihad”.

SITE said the comments were made in a speech posted by Sahara Media on its website on May 23.

There have been reports of collaboration between AQIM and Ansar Dine and witnesses said local al Qaeda leaders have been spotted in areas under Ansar Dine control. But neither group had previously officially commented on their connection.

DAKAR (Reuters) – Mali’s junta said on Friday it would resist any deployment of West African soldiers in the country and treat foreign forces sent there under a regional plan as “the enemy”.

The comments came a day after regional bloc ECOWAS said it would send troops to Mali and Guinea-Bissau to tackle the aftermath of coups that, in the case of Mali, has left more than half the country in rebel hands.

“We will not accept any ECOWAS soldiers on our territory. This is non-negotiable. Any soldier who comes will be seen as the enemy,” Bakary Mariko, a spokesman for Mali’s CNRDRE junta, told Reuters by telephone.

Mariko accused ECOWAS – which called for elections within a year, ordered the military back to barracks and threatened military figures with sanctions if there was further meddling in politics – of going beyond its mandate.

He said the regional body need only provide Mali’s army with logistics to help it defeat separatist and Islamists rebels now controlling the north: “We have the men.”

While Guinea-Bissau has suffered from chronic instability, Mali had enjoyed 20 years of civilian rule before soldiers ousted the president on March 22 over complaints of his handling of a northern rebellion.

Taking advantage of the chaos after the Mali coup, a mix of separatist and Islamist rebels then seized the northern two-thirds of the country, carving out a zone experts fear is a haven for al Qaeda cells and international criminal gangs.

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Within weeks, Mali has plunged from being a sovereign democracy to a fractured territory without a state, occupied by competing rebel groups in the north while politicians and coup leaders in the south jostle for control of the capital Bamako.

There is no sign the broken nation can be put back together soon – raising concerns among neighbours and Western powers of the emergence of a lawless “rogue state” exploited by al Qaeda and criminals.

“We have never been in such a dire situation at any other time in our history,” said Mahmoud Dicko, influential head of the Islamic High Council in the poor former French colony once seen as a poster child for electoral democracy in West Africa.

“There is no state and two-thirds of the country is out of control,” he said of the seizure by a mix of Islamists and Tuareg-led separatists of the northern desert territory one-and-a-half-times the size of France.

Ask Malians in the street what they think of the crisis and most will say they are “depassé” – a French term for being overwhelmed by events that go beyond comprehension.

Even before March 22′s coup and ensuing rebel advance, Mali was struggling to deal with this year’s drought on the southern rim of the Sahara. Over 270,000 Malians have fled their homes as the violence makes bringing aid to hunger victims even harder.

But while Mali is now firmly on world radar screens as a serious security threat in the making, neither Western powers nor its neighbours can agree on how to come to its rescue.

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Within weeks, Mali has plunged from being a sovereign democracy to a fractured territory without a state, occupied by competing rebel groups in the north while politicians and coup leaders in the south jostle for control of the capital Bamako.

There is no sign the broken nation can be put back together soon – raising concerns among neighbors and Western powers of the emergence of a lawless “rogue state” exploited by al Qaeda and criminals.

“We have never been in such a dire situation at any other time in our history,” said Mahmoud Dicko, influential head of the Islamic High Council in the poor former French colony once seen as a poster child for electoral democracy in West Africa.

“There is no state and two-thirds of the country is out of control,” he said of the seizure by a mix of Islamists and Tuareg-led separatists of the northern desert territory one-and-a-half-times the size of France.

Ask Malians in the street what they think of the crisis and most will say they are “depassé” – a French term for being overwhelmed by events that go beyond comprehension.

Even before March 22′s coup and ensuing rebel advance, Mali was struggling to deal with this year’s drought on the southern rim of the Sahara. Over 270,000 Malians have fled their homes as the violence makes bringing aid to hunger victims even harder.

But while Mali is now firmly on world radar screens as a serious security threat in the making, neither Western powers nor its neighbors can agree on how to come to its rescue.

BAMAKO (Reuters) – About 200 soldiers claiming to be government loyalists have moved back into northern Mali saying they will fight to take it back from Tuareg-led separatist and Islamist rebels that routed the army across the region three weeks ago.

The troop movement just inside Mali’s eastern border with Niger came as witnesses said gunmen in rebel-held Timbuktu, near the northwestern border with Mauritania, opened fire to disperse residents protesting against the occupation of their town.

It was the first reported sign of local resistance to rebels in Mali’s remote north, which experts say has become a safe haven for al Qaeda cells and smugglers.

Politicians and the military junta that ousted the president last month are not known to have drawn up a plan yet to wrest back control of the desert zone.

But a Reuters witness saw as many as 200 soldiers and dozens of vehicles under the command of Colonel El Hadj Gamou appear in the town of Lebezanga, near the border with Niger.

Gamou, a Tuareg, for weeks led Bamako’s efforts to repel rebels before saying earlier this month he had joined the rebel ranks, only to reappear in Niger last week to announce he was in fact ready to lead a counter-attack with 500 men.

Two military officers in the border region said forces under Gamou pushed on Saturday some 40 km (20 miles) further north towards Gao, which is in the hands of separatist MNLA rebels and Islamist rebels who want to impose sharia (Islamic law).

BAMAKO, April 17 (Reuters) – Mali named a leading scientist as its caretaker prime minister on Tuesday but its path back to civilian rule after last month’s coup was thrown into doubt as soldiers arrested key allies of the ousted president, Amadou Toumani Toure.

The coup emboldened Tuareg-led rebels to seize control of the northern half of the West African country, a zone larger than France which security experts now fear could become a haven for al Qaeda allies already operating largely unchecked there.

The appointment of former NASA astrophysicist Cheick Modibo Diarra, a political novice whom U.S. technology giant Microsoft Corp named its “ambassador to Africa” in 2006, was announced in a brief statement by state television.

The move was the latest step in restoring constitutional order after leaders of the March 22 coup formally handed power to a caretaker president last week.

But the overnight arrests of leading Toure allies by soldiers underlined that the junta holds sway in the capital Bamako, and suggested that the road back to full civilian rule and new elections could be long and rocky.

Those arrested include former prime minister Modibo Sidibe, ex-defence minister Sadio Gassama, Toure’s former chief of staff, General Amadou Cissoko, and Bani Kante, a businessman who advised Toure on Libyan investments in Mali.

“Modibo was arrested at his home by military police around 11 p.m. on Monday evening, the three others were arrested later,” said an aide to Sidibe. The former prime minister has already been arrested and released twice since the coup.

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Former parliament speaker Dioncounda Traore took over as Mali’s interim president on Thursday from the leaders of last month’s coup, promising to hold elections and fight rebels occupying half the country.

Traore, 70, a labor activist turned politician, was sworn in by Supreme Court President Nouhoum Tapily in the capital Bamako as part of a deal to restore civilian rule after army officers staged a March 22 coup in the West African state.

The coup shattered predominantly Muslim Mali’s image as one of the most peaceful and stable states in the region.

Triggered by army anger over the previous civilian government’s failure to tackle a Tuareg-led rebellion in the north, it backfired spectacularly, allowing the rebels to advance and declare a northern separatist homeland. Al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters are among the occupying rebels.

With residents and U.N. rights experts reporting killings, rapes and looting on the rise in rebel-seized northern towns, there are fears of the vast northern territory becoming a lawless and destabilizing “rogue state” in West Africa.

“We will never negotiate the partition of Mali,” Traore said in his inauguration speech in which he promised to organize “free and transparent elections” over the whole of the national territory.

Former President Amadou Toumani Toure, deposed by last month’s coup, resigned to facilitate the transition deal.

DAKAR (Reuters) – Tuareg fighters are celebrating the seizure of key towns in Mali’s north as a historic victory in their half-century battle for a desert homeland.

But for the Sahel region and wider world, their lightning advance, made as the distant southern capital Bamako struggled with the aftermath of a coup, poses a security nightmare.

The rebel success has swept with it a collection of other gunmen, including Islamists, al Qaeda and others with criminal links, widening an area of lawless instability on the Sahara’s edge.

“If the situation was delicate before the coup, it is now a total defeat,” said one senior diplomat following the situation.

“This was the worst case scenario and it has happened. It can worsen yet if there is no quick resolution to the institutional impasse in Bamako,” the diplomat added.

In three short days last week, a mix of rebel forces seized the three main regional centers of a territory the size of France, bringing the Tuareg closer than ever before to their decades-old dream of carving out a desert nation of their own.

In Kidal, the top Tuareg army officer, surrounded by rebels, deserted with 500 heavily armed men. The garrison town of Gao with its helicopter gunships folded in hours as soldiers fled. Militia who were expected to hold Timbuktu put up no resistance.

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Mali’s junta leader appealed for outside help to secure the West African country on Friday as separatist Tuareg rebels took the strategic northern town of Kidal and advanced towards new targets further south.

Arms spilling out of Libya from last year’s conflict have bolstered a northern rebellion in Mali. President Amadou Toumani Toure was facing rising unpopularity over his failure to halt the rebellion before he was toppled in last week’s coup.

But the coup, if anything, has emboldened the rebels, while the coup leaders have been internationally condemned – including by neighbours which on Thursday gave them 72 hours to surrender power or see Mali’s borders and bank funding shut off.

“Our army needs the help of Mali’s friends to save the civilian population and Mali’s territorial integrity,” coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo told reporters at the barracks outside the capital Bamako serving as the president’s office.

The rebels, who began fighting for an independent north in January, have seized on the confusion to prepare offensives on the three regional centers in Mali’s north. Among their number are Ansar Edine, an Islamist group with loose personal ties to local al Qaeda militants and which promotes sharia law.

Claiming its most significant victory so far, the rebel MNLA group said on its website it had taken Kidal, a town of 25,000 people, after 48 hours of fighting.

“The MNLA will continue its advance on the two other regional capitals of Azawad,” it said of the northern desert territory it sees as its rightful homeland.

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Mali’s junta leader appealed for outside help to secure the West African country after separatist Tuareg rebels took the strategic northern town of Kidal on Friday in their biggest victory yet.

Arms spilling out of Libya from last year’s conflict have bolstered a northern rebellion in Mali. President Amadou Toumani Toure was facing rising unpopularity over his failure to halt the rebellion before he was toppled in last week’s coup.

But the coup has if anything emboldened the rebels, while the coup leaders have been internationally condemned – including by neighbors which on Thursday gave them 72 hours to surrender power or see Mali’s borders and bank funding shut off.

“Our army needs the help of Mali’s friends to save the civilian population and Mali’s territorial integrity,” coup leader Captain Amadou Sanogo told reporters at the barracks outside the capital Bamako serving as the president’s office.

The rebels, who began fighting for an independent north in January, have seized on the confusion to prepare offensives on the three regional centers in Mali’s north. Among their number are Ansar Edine, an Islamist group with loose personal ties to local al Qaeda militants and which promotes sharia law.

Claiming its most significant victory so far, the rebel MNLA group said on its website it had taken Kidal, a town of 25,000, after 48 hours of fighting.

“The MNLA will continue its advance on the two other regional capitals of Azawad,” it said of the northern desert territory it sees as its rightful homeland.