Updated 02:13 | Published at 01:27
US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has met military leaders in Niger during a two-hour meeting.
However, the talks, described as “difficult”, are said not to have led to any immediate progress.
US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland stated on Monday that she had a meeting with military leaders in Niger in the country’s capital, Niamey.
– These conversations were extremely frank and sometimes quite difficult, Nuland told reporters after the two-hour meeting.
According to Nuland, the talks have not brought any immediate diplomatic progress. She also adds that the coup plotters refused to let her meet junta leader Abdourahamane Tiani and jailed president Mohamed Bazoum.
The meeting was held instead with General Moussa Salaou Barmou and three of the colonels involved in the military coup, and Nuland says he gave the junta “a number of options” to back down.
Diplomatic solution
She is also said to have made clear the consequences for Niger’s relations with the United States if Mohamed Bazoum is not reinstated as president or if the country calls in help from the Russian private army Wagner.
– I hope they will keep the door open for diplomacy. We made that proposal. We’ll see, she said.
Earlier on Monday, Matthew Miller, spokesman for the US State Department, stated that a diplomatic solution is still seen as a possibility.
– That window is definitely still open. We believe the junta should step aside and allow President Bazoum to resume his duties, Miller said.
Conversation with Ecowas?
Earlier in the day, there were also reports that the coup plotters in Niger are said to be ready to negotiate with Ecowas. The West African Cooperation Organization has threatened military intervention unless the junta restores civilian rule.
Niger Prime Minister Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou told France’s TV5 Monde that the junta had asked Ecawa’s mediators to return to Niger and that they were expected in the capital Niamey on Monday night or Tuesday.
When the Ecowas delegation traveled to Niamey on Thursday, it was not allowed to meet either junta leader Abdourahamane Tiani or jailed president Mohamed Bazoum. Those deployed never got further than the airport before returning home empty-handed.
Ecowas holds an extraordinary meeting
A deadline set by Ecowas for the junta to back off expired overnight on Monday with no reaction other than Niger closing its airspace and threatening to retaliate against any military attack.
Ecowas has called for a summit with the organization’s leaders on Thursday in Abuja, Nigeria.
FACTS
The West African country, which is two-thirds desert, is one of the world’s poorest.
Half of the country’s 26.2 million inhabitants live in poverty.
Niger has suffered from chronic political instability since it gained independence from France in 1960.
During its independence, the country has suffered four coups d’état, most recently in February 2010 when the then president Mamadou Tandja was overthrown.
The country’s first ever democratic transition of power took place in 2021 when Mohamed Bazoum was elected president after his predecessor resigned voluntarily.
Like neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso, Niger is struggling with a jihadist insurgency that started in Mali in 2012 and spread across borders.
The country has been one of the West’s last allies in the Sahel region against Islamist extremism, since French troops were ported from neighboring Mali earlier this year.
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