Mali's Colonel Assimi Goita was sworn into office as the troubled country's transitional president on Monday despite international condemnation of his latest power grab, the second coup he has led in nine months.
Goita, who ousted Mali's interim president and prime minister in May, assumed office in a ceremony at the International Conference Centre in Bamako.
"I swear before God and the Malian people to preserve the republican regime (...) to preserve democratic gains," said the 37-year-old officer, who was dressed in full military regalia.
Mali's second putsch in nine months has sparked diplomatic uproar, prompting the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to suspend the country.
France has also suspended joint military operations with Malian forces, and stopped giving military advice.
The former colonial power has thousands of troops stationed in the semi-arid Sahel to help fight jihadist violence that erupted in Mali in 2012 and now threatens the region.
Monday's ceremony wass expected to clear the path towards appointing a civilian prime minister – a key international demand.
Speaking ahead of the event, a diplomat said ambassadors planned to stay away from the ceremony, sending more junior envoys instead.
While that will be "neither a boycott not a sanction", it will send "a political signal", said the diplomat, who declined to be named.
Regional insecurity
France and Mali's other partners want assurances that a civilian administration will be back in power come February 2022.
Goita is expected to nominate as his prime minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga, a former minister and member of the M5 protest movement, which helped to force out former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita last August following mass protests over perceived corruption and a bloody jihadist insurgency.
M5 became sidelined in the army-dominated post-coup administration, dubbing the transitional government a "disguised military regime".
But there has been a noticeable rapprochement between the group and the army since the May 24 coup.
Maiga, 63, insisted Friday that his country would abide by its international obligations, and he also paid homage to French troops who have died in the country.
Maintaining its international partnerships, not least with France, is crucial for Mali, one of the world's poorest countries and whose security forces are thinly resourced.
Violence remains all too prevalent in the country which on Thursday saw 11 Tuareg killed by as yet unidentified assailants near Menaka in the northeast – only the latest among thousands of victims in intercommunal and jihadist violence which has displaced around one million people.
The extent to which the region as a whole faces uncertainty was underscored when presumed Islamist radicals killed at least 160 people in neighbouring Burkina Faso's northeast on Friday night in the worst attack the country has seen.
In a message Sunday to Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, Goita said he "strongly condemned this cowardly and hateful attack".
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
