France says it has proposed that members of armed groups in Mali who are delaying implementation of a 2015 peace agreement should be put on a U.N. sanctions blacklist, reports ABC News.
France's deputy U.N. ambassador Anne Gueguen told the Security Council on Thursday that the time for warnings is over and France has submitted the names of individuals — whom she did not identify — to the U.N. Security Council committee set up last year to deal with Mali sanctions.
Gueguen said a new report by the committee's panel of experts "shed light in incontestable fashion" on some individuals associated with armed groups who are undermining the 2015 peace agreement "through their links with criminal or terrorist activity."
To date, there are no names on the Mali sanctions blacklist.
The panel said in the new report that it did not identify any individuals or entities deliberately obstructing the 2015 agreement.
Rather, the panel said it did identify individuals from armed groups that signed the peace deal and splinter groups involved in attacks against Malian security and armed forces and in organized crime who indirectly threaten implementation of the peace deal.
The three parties to the 2015 agreement were the government, a coalition of groups called the Coordination of Movements of Azawad or CMA which includes ethnic Arabs and Tuaregs who seek autonomy in northern Mali, and a pro-government militia known as the Platform.
The panel said in the report that it collected "credible information from several independent sources" indicating that a Malian armed forces defector, Alkassoum Ag Abdoulaye, who is the military commander of a rebel splinter group, participated in two attacks against a Malian armed forces camp near Soumpi on Oct. 24, 2017 and Jan. 27, 2018.
Read more of this report from the Associated Press published by ABC News.