The key role of Mohammed VI in achieving peace in Mali

The president of the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP) in Mali, Colonel Assimi Goita, thanked the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, for his role in attempting to find a peaceful solution to the crisis the country is experiencing.

In mid July it was announced that the Alaouite monarch had set in motion a "secret mediation", according to diplomatic sources, between the influential Imam Mahmoud Dicko, one of the opposition leaders, and the president of the republic, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

Other sources reported the mediation of the Moroccan ambassador in Bamako, Hassan Naciri, who sent a message from the monarch to Imam Dicko.

According to the Moroccan news agency MAP, during an audience granted between the president of the CNSP and Ambassador Naciri, Goita expressed "his deep gratitude" to Mohammed VI for Rabat's contribution to solving the country's crisis situation.

Goita recalled that the Moroccan ambassador was the first diplomat to contact the new authorities since 20 August and praised relations between the countries.

The opposition coalition known as the June 5th Movement, led by the cleric Dicko, is calling for President Keita's resignation following the parliamentary elections in the African country in April. The protests were prompted by a decision of the Constitutional Court to annul some of the election results, which according to the opposition unfairly helped Keita's party members.

Keita refused to resign, despite the fact that he has been without a government since April when his prime minister and the rest of the government resigned amidst an intensification of the violence in the civil war that the country has been experiencing since 2012.