Mali Rebels Say to Stop Fighting, Slam U.N. Resolution

Ansar Dine and MNLA, armed rebel groups active in northern Mali, on Friday announced their commitment to ceasing hostilities and denounced U.N. Security Council approval of a military intervention force.

The Security Council resolution adopted on Thursday gave an African-led military force an initial one-year mandate to use "all necessary measures" to help Mali's government reconquer the north from Islamist militants.

"We denounce this decision. We have always denounced the (planned) military intervention and we have said that it is not the solution," Mohamed Ag Akharib, a representative of armed Islamist group Ansar Dine, told reporters in Algiers.

"We are very optimistic and we ask Algeria and the international community to join us in searching for a peaceful solution" to the Mali crisis, he said.

Representatives of Ansar Dine, one of three Islamist groups now controlling northern Mali, and the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), said at a meeting in Algiers they were willing to negotiate with Bamako.

They said they had agreed "to refrain from all action likely to generate confrontations and all forms of hostility in the zones under their control and to do everything necessary to get this commitment respected."

MNLA and Ansar Dine said they would "coordinate their positions and actions in the context of seeking a peaceful and durable solution with the transitional authorities in Mali, with the guarantees of the relevant parties."

The two armed groups also committed to working for the liberation of "anyone kidnapped or in a state of captivity in the affected area."

Ten Europeans, including seven French nationals, and three Algerians have been kidnapped in northern Mali by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its offshoot the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) since September 2010.

The rebel groups, meeting in Algiers under the mediation of Algeria and Burkina Faso, said they wanted to "secure all the areas under their control, through the deployment of security forces comprising members of both their groups."