Niger junta vows response if it faces any ‘aggression’

• AFP, NIAMEY

Niger’s newly installed junta has threatened an immediate response to any “aggression or attempted aggression” as the clock ticked down on a deadline given by its neighbors to reverse last week’s coup.

An Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) team on Thursday arrived in the capital, Naimey, “but did not spend the night” as scheduled, nor meet with coup leader Abdourahamane Tiani or Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum, a member of the delegation said yesterday.

The junta also made diplomatic swipes against international condemnation of the putsch, scrapping military pacts with France, and pulling its ambassadors from Paris and Washington, as well as from Togo and Nigeria.

Photo: AFP

On Sunday, ECOWAS gave the junta a week to reinstate Bazoum, who was toppled by his guard on Wednesday last week, or risk a possible military intervention.

Regional military chiefs were in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, to discuss the possibility of a such an intervention, but Nigerian President Bola Tinubu on Thursday told the bloc’s delegations to do “whatever it takes” to reach an “amicable resolution.”

Niger’s junta warned it would meet force with force.

“Any aggression or attempted aggression against the State of Niger will see an immediate and unannounced response from the Niger Defense and Security Forces on one of [the bloc’s] members,” one of the putschists said in a statement read on national television late on Thursday.

This came with “the exception of suspended friendly countries,” an allusion to Burkina Faso and Mali, neighboring countries that have also fallen to military coups in the past few years.

Those countries’ juntas have warned any military intervention in Niger would be tantamount to a “declaration of war” against them.

Across Niger on Thursday, thousands of people rallied to back the coup leaders on the anniversary of the country’s 1960 independence from France, with some brandishing Russian flags and chanting anti-French slogans.

Meanwhile, Russia yesterday said that outside intervention would not improve the situation in Niger.

“It is unlikely that the intervention of any extra-regional force can change the situation for the better,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, adding that Russia was “monitoring the situation very closely and concerned about the tensions arising in the region.”