Mali peace talks start in Algiers after prisoner swap

ALGIERS (Reuters) – Mali’s government and rebels were holding peace talks in Algiers intended to end decades of uprisings by northern Tuareg tribes after an exchange of prisoners helped to get the negotiations started.

Mali’s vast desert north – called Azawad by the rebels – has risen up four times since independence from France in 1960, most recently last year, when French forces intervened to drive back Islamists who had taken advantage of a Tuareg-led rebellion and were advancing on the south.

The talks are the first since fighting in the Tuareg stronghold of Kidal killed around 50 Malian soldiers in May. The light-skinned Tuaregs and Arabs perennially accuse black African governments in the capital Bamako of excluding them from power.

France, Mali’s northern neighbour Algeria and the West Africa regional bloc ECOWAS are all pushing for talks despite deep distrust between Bamako and rebels, and among the separatist groups.

The negotiations, which include representatives of the United Nations, European Union and the African Union, are aimed at aimed at laying out a framework for a broad peace deal.

“The government is committed to talks in good faith, in a spirit of openness and confidence, to reach a definitive agreement with our brothers in the north,” Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said, according to the Algerian state news agency APS.

Algeria’s government said it had helped to broker the prison swap – 45 civilians and troops from the government in exchange for 42 members and sympathisers of rebel movements – before the talks started.