20110513
REUTERS

Mali's foreign minister urged countries in the Sahel on Friday to do more on the ground to help fight al-Qaeda's north African wing (AQIM), which is being bolstered with heavy weapons smuggled from Libya.

Foreign ministers and armed forces' chiefs are to meet next week in Bamako to review coordination efforts, but Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga said on a four-day visit to Paris he wanted to see countries doing much more on the ground.

"AQIM is becoming a danger for our country and society so we are going to speed up regional cooperation because without a complementary and coordinated plan we cannot get the upper hand," the former presidential candidate told Reuters.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is a mostly autonomous wing which sprung from the Algerian Salafist movement in 2007. The group, believed to number a few hundred members, has taken advantage of poor cross-border coordination, weak governance and poverty to mount sporadic attacks on local armies and kidnap Westerners, earning millions of dollars in ransoms.

Maiga also warned the group could stage revenge attacks for the killing by U.S. forces of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Regional security has been complicated by the fallout southwards from the civil war in Libya. Governments in the Sahel believe AQIM fighters have received convoys of weapons looted from Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's abandoned arms caches.

"The security situation continues to worsen and it has been exacerbated by the Libya crisis so today we need energetic, lasting and coordinated action," Maiga said.

He said there was "no doubt" SA--7 surface-to-air missiles, anti-air guns that can be mounted on trucks and small arms were entering the country.