Reviewing the ranks of French soldiers in the dusty Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, Le Drian paid homage to the courage of troops engaged in fierce fire-fights with al Qaeda militants in the desolate desert region near the Algerian border.

An eight-week, French-led offensive has broken the control of al Qaeda-linked Islamists over the northern two-thirds of the impoverished landlocked nation, though pockets of resistance remain in the desert and mountains.

“Our mission is to liberate Mali, strengthen the country, and to assure sovereignty,” Le Drian said in Gao, the main town in northern Mali, shortly after he visited troops in the mountains. “The security of Mali, and the security of our country, go together,” he said.

France launched a ground and air operation on January 11, saying the Islamist rebels’ hold of Mali’s north posed a risk to the security of West Africa and Europe.

Having halted a push southward by Islamist rebels, French forces have driven militants out of major towns and, alongside hundreds of Chadian soldiers, are now seeking to clear rebels from cave redoubts in the Adrar des Ifoghas.

“We are in the last phase, the most decisive phase,” Le Drian said. “This phase entails some very violent combat. When the liberation of the whole country is complete, then we will hand over responsibility to African forces.”

President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday that France would start to draw down its forces in Mali from April, a month later than previously forecast.

HOPES FOR U.N. PEACEKEEPING MISSION

France is keen to hand responsibility for operations in Mali to an 8,000-strong African-led force AFISMA, some three-quarters of which has already deployed to the landlocked country.

Paris is pushing for the Mali mission to be given a U.N. peacekeeping mandate once offensive military operations have finished. The Security Council is expected to discuss this in the coming weeks.

A Malian soldier who was involved in fighting with Islamists who killed a French soldier on Wednesday said the resistance was still fierce just 90 km from Gao.

“I cannot say how many (rebels) there were but gunfire was coming from every direction,” the soldier told Reuters, asking not to be named as he was not authorized to speak to the press.

“We killed them all, but it is not over. They have reinforcements … They are in the forests and they are not leaving,” he added.

Chad has claimed to have killed al Qaeda’s two top leaders in the region, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Hollande said on Wednesday that “terrorist leaders” had been killed in the operation, but did not provide further details.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said DNA testing was being carried out on the bodies of hundreds of dead Islamist fighters.

“To identify the two or three leaders who have been cited, we have to carry out precise tests with DNA and that is what the army services are doing,” he told RTL radio. “We should know fairly quickly.”

France’s Liberation newspaper reported on Thursday that a French citizen fighting in the Islamist ranks had been taken prisoner by the French.

Even once fighting is over, a durable peace in Mali will also require unifying the country’s south, home to the capital Bamako, with the vast desert north, where Tuareg separatists launched a rebellion last year that was hijacked by Islamist fighters.

Many in southern Mali now feel deep resentment toward the northern Tuaregs and light-skilled Arabs, associated with the Islamist fighters, complicating prospects for peace.

President Dioncounda Traore’s government, which aims to hold national elections in July, announced the creation of a Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission on Wednesday, charged with identifying human rights abuses during the conflict and deciding which armed groups were eligible to participate in talks.

(Additional reporting by Tiemoko Diallo in Bamako and Vicky Buffery in Paris; Writing by Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; Editing by Jon Hemming)

After reviewing ranks of French soldiers near the desolate Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, Le Drian told France 24 television that Paris’ aim was to help “reestablish security in the whole of Mali’s territory”.

“It is after that, progressively, we will hand over to an African mission under a U.N. mandate,” he said. “I came to greet our forces … (and say) that France is proud of its troops and proud of the professionalism of the operation and the way it is working out.”

France said al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels’ seizure of the northern two-thirds of Mali in April posed a risk to the security of Europe and West Africa.

It launched a ground and air operation on January 11 to halt a push southward by Islamist rebels, and has since driven the militants out of major towns of northern Mali.

President Francois Hollande said on Wednesday that France would start to draw down its forces in Mali from April, a month later than previously forecast.

French and Chadian forces have battled die-hard Islamists in the Adrar des Ifoghas, near the Algerian border, for two weeks. Chad has claimed to have killed al Qaeda’s two top leaders in the region, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid and Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Hollande said on Wednesday that “terrorist leaders” had been killed in the operation, but did not provide further details.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that DNA testing was being carried out on the bodies of hundreds of dead Islamist fighters.

“To identify the two or three leaders who have been cited, we have to carry out precise tests with DNA and that is what the army services are doing,” he told RTL radio. “We should know fairly quickly.”

France is keen to hand responsibility for operations in Mali to an 8,000-strong African-led force AFISMA, some three-quarters of which has already deployed to the landlocked country.

Paris is pushing for the Mali mission to be given a U.N. peacekeeping mandate once offensive military operations have finished. The Security Council is expected to discuss this in the coming weeks.

However, achieving a durable peace in Mali will require unifying the country’s south, home to the capital Bamako, with the vast desert north, where Tuareg separatists launched a rebellion last year that was hijacked by Islamist fighters.

Many in southern Mali now feel deep resentment toward the northern Tuaregs and light-skilled Arabs, associated with the Islamist fighters, complicating prospects for peace.

President Dioncounda Traore’s government, which aims to hold national elections in July, announced the creation of a Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission on Wednesday, charged with identifying human rights abuses during the conflict and deciding which armed groups were eligible to participate in talks.

(Additional reporting by Tiemoko Diallo in Bamako and Vicky Buffery in Paris; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Richard Valdmanis)

“Today’s the big day,” a fighter who called himself Don told Reuters at a base camp just north of the economic capital on Sunday, one of hundreds of pro-Ouattara troops massed there.

He was wrong. The big push to unseat incumbent Laurent Gbagbo did not materialize, even though his commanding officer, Issiaka “Wattao” Ouattara, had also signaled earlier that Sunday was the day.

In the end, Wattao charged off north up the deserted motorway in a convoy of half a dozen 4x4s, in the opposite direction to Abidjan.

No explanation was given — as none was given about the flying visit to the camp a few hours earlier by Ouattara’s prime minister Guillaume Soro.

It was the third such day on which Ouattara’s forces had promised the “final assault” to dislodge Gbagbo, loser of a November 28 election, according to UN-certified results.

Speaking later on Sunday on the pro-Ouattara TCI television channel, Soro said their strategy had been to encircle the city, harass Gbagbo’s troops positions and gather intelligence on their arsenal.

“The situation is now ripe for a lightning offensive,” he said.

MANGOU RETURNS

As early as last Thursday, Soro predicted Gbagbo had just two to three hours left in power.

While it might be premature to say the pro-Ouattara military push started only last Monday is losing momentum, the past few days have been more difficult.

Pro-Gbagbo forces have wrested back control of the state broadcaster RTI, which at the weekend showed unverified images of Gbagbo calmly sipping tea at what appeared to be his Abidjan residence.

In a morale-booster for the Gbagbo camp, national army chief Philippe Mangou has returned to the fold after briefly seeking refuge at the home of the South African ambassador, it emerged late Sunday.

The United Nations has raised concerns about the possible involvement of fighters linked to Ouattara’s forces in hundreds of killings in the west – something which Ouattara’s camp denies.

After they swiftly seized swathes of the country, it was always expected that pro-Ouattara forces would meet more resistance as they meet elite Gbagbo troops at his bastions in downtown Abidjan.

Troops loyal to Gbagbo have held on to positions around the presidential palace and at his residence in the well-to-do Cocody suburb.

One Western diplomat said on Saturday Ouattara forces had been planning an attack on the presidential residence but it did not happen, possibly because members of the pro-Gbagbo youth wing, the Young Patriots, threw a human shield round it.

But sources in and around the Ouattara camp say the hesitation is also at least in part to do with divisions among top military brass jostling for influence in a post-Gbagbo government.

Fighters following Ibrahim “IB” Coulibaly — a key figure in the so-called “invisible commandos” whose guerrilla tactics have foxed Gbagbo forces across Abidjan in recent weeks — say their allegiance is to IB, not Ouattara.

“IB wants to be president. He is an idiot,” Wattao told Reuters dismissively at the weekend.

An equally plausible explanation is that he and other commanders are simply biding their time for the right moment militarily — but the question is how long they can wait.

A source inside Ouattara’s camp denied that there were divisions within the ranks, adding that the final assault was taking a little longer than expected because they wanted to secure gains first.

At their camp, some of Wattao’s men noted that Sunday’s ration of bread came without the usual tin of sardines.

But the overall mood at the camp remained calm, almost jokey.

To much laughter, one man dressed in police uniform handed out pink parking tickets to drivers of pick-up trucks loaded with machine-guns that were parked in a row in the middle of the empty motorway.

(Additional reporting by Tim Cocks and Loucoumane Coulibaly in Abidjan, Editing by Bate Felix and Giles Elgood)