Military coup: ‘Mali president formally resigns’

We have just received his letter of resignation, reveals Burkinabe Foreign Minister.

BAMAKO: Mali’s President Amadou Toumani Toure, who was toppled by a military coup last month, has formally resigned from his post, the international mediator in the crisis announced on Sunday. “We have just received his letter of resignation,” Burkinabe Foreign Minister Djibrill Bassole told reporters after a meeting with the deposed leader in Bamako. “Accordingly we are going to inform the competent authorities,” so that his departure can be formally noted and the appropriate measures taken, he added. Toure’s resignation opens the way for the departure of the junta that ousted him. For under the terms of a transition deal concluded with the West African bloc ECOWAS late Friday, the junta’s leaders said they in turn would step aside to allow a return to democracy once Toure had formally quit.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9^th, 2012.