Responding to Ouagadougou’s demands, French soldiers will leave the country within “a month”

French military influence is eroding in the Sahel. Paris will withdraw its troops from Burkina Faso within “a month”, the French Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, after having been officially informed the day before by the junta of the denunciation of the defense agreements binding the two countries.

“Tuesday (…) we formally received the denunciation, by the Burkinabé government, of the 2018 agreement relating to the status of the French forces present in this country. In accordance with the terms of the agreement, the denunciation takes effect one month after receipt of the written notification”, declared the Quai d’Orsay, assuring that France “respect (has) the terms of this agreement by following up on this application “.

According to the junta, diplomatic ties are not at stake

Burkina currently hosts a contingent of nearly 400 French special forces, the Saber force. The latter will have left the country “by the end of February” and the removal of all equipment should be completed “at the end of April”, said a source familiar with the matter.

The Burkinabe government for its part confirmed on Monday that it had requested the departure of the French soldiers based in the country within a month, but Paris had replied to wait for clarifications from the transitional president Ibrahim Traoré. “What we are denouncing is the agreement that allows French forces to be present in Burkina Faso. It is not about the end of diplomatic relations between Burkina Faso and France,” declared the spokesperson for the Burkinabe government, Jean-Emmanuel Ouédraogo, in an interview on Radio-Télévision du Burkina (RTB).

Burkina wants the replacement of the French ambassador

France, a former colonial power, has been contested in the country for several months. In December, Ouagadougou had thus asked Paris to replace the French ambassador, Luc Hallade, in its crosshairs for in particular having reported on the deterioration of the security situation in the country. Monday, Jean-Emmanuel Ouédraogo indicated that the government had “received all the assurances that the French authorities will accede to this request this week”. But according to a diplomatic source, the fate of the ambassador is not yet sealed and he is still in Ouagadougou.

With the next departure of French troops, the Malian precedent is in everyone’s mind. After nine years of presence, the French soldiers left the country last summer, pushed out by a hostile junta which appealed to the sulphurous Russian paramilitary company Wagner.

Behind the scenes, however, the Burkinabe junta assures France that it does not intend to enlist the services of Wagner, whose liaison team has come to prospect in Burkina, which is rich in mineral resources, according to several French sources.

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