Mali talks: Separatists vow to speak with single voice

Algiers - Malian separatist militias agreed on Sunday to speak with a "single voice" in talks with Bamako on ending conflicts that still rage a year after Mali returned to democracy.

The APS news agency in Algeria, which is hosting a second round of talks between separatist groups and Malian government representatives, announced the move.

"Now it's one voice who will speak on behalf of the people of Azawad (northern Mali)," APS reported Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Salah, president of the Coalition of the People for Azawad (CPA), as saying.

He said the CPA, the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA) had signed a Memorandum of Understanding.

In it, they pledged to work together for the "legitimate" aspirations of the people of Azawad, he said after meeting Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra.

MAA general secretary Ahmed Ould Sidi Mohamed said that this step "will be followed by others until the outcome of a just and comprehensive solution" in Mali.

A second round of negotiations between Bamako and the armed groups began on 1 September.

Stability and peace

Riven by ethnic rivalries, a Tuareg rebellion and an Islamist insurgency in its vast desert north, the west African nation has struggled for stability and peace since a military coup in 2012.

There has been a spike in violence by Islamist and separatist militants in northern Mali, including the deaths in May of at least 50 soldiers in the Tuareg region of Kidal.

The Algeria talks are based on a "roadmap" agreed in July and overseen by a "college of mediators" including Algeria, the African Union and the 15-member regional bloc Ecowas.

Malian Prime Minister Moussa Mara has suggested that the government will make concessions but has set a "red line", saying that Mali's territorial integrity and secular status are not up for discussion.

The talks are taking place with a new defence agreement in place between Mali and its former colonial power France.

Paris recently wound up Operation Serval, its military offensive launched in January 2013 to oust Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists who had occupied northern Mali.