Guinea blocks arms shipment to Mali as distrust grows

Guinea has blocked a shipment of heavy weapons to Mali fearing they could end up in the wrong hands, a Guinean official and regional diplomats said on Thursday, a further sign of distrust between regional powers and Mali’s former junta.The weeks-long weapons stand-off underscores a deep regional crisis as Mali’s neighbours and Western nations fear a new global security threat but are struggling to respond to it.Rebels dominated by Islamists - including al Qaeda - have taken over the north, and Mali’s military coup leaders, despite handing power to civilians in April, are widely suspected of pulling levers of power behind the scenes.Mali’s military leadership this week said it opposed direct foreign intervention to regain control of the desert north, clashing publicly with the interim government which had hours earlier made a formal request for a regional force.“(West African regional bloc) ECOWAS wanted the constitutional crisis ended and a strong civilian government in place before they released the weapons,” a regional diplomat told Reuters. “They didn’t want to reinforce the junta.”Abdoul Kabele Camara, Guinea’s deputy defence minister, confirmed a weapons shipment to land-locked Mali had been blocked as the government did not know who in Mali should receive them but said there were talks over their release.A source monitoring international arms shipments said that about 20 BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers (APCs), ordered by ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure, were being blocked onboard a ship that had sailed from Bulgaria.Bakary Mariko, a spokesman for Mali’s CNRDRE former junta, blamed ECOWAS and the African Union for Guinea’s freezing of the shipment, which he said included about a dozen APCs. He said a shipment of 1,000 light arms had been blocked also at the Senegalese port of Dakar.