Niger announced overnight that it was reopening its borders with several of its neighbours, excluding Nigeria, a week after a coup that has been condemned by foreign powers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe land and air borders with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Libya and Chad are re-opened from August 1, 2023,\u201d a junta spokesperson said on state television.<\/p>\n
Nigeria shares a 1,608 kilometres (999 miles) land border with Niger. It runs from Benin in the west to Chad in the east.<\/p>\n
The junta closed the borders last Wednesday, at the same time that it announced that it had removed democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum from power.<\/p>\n
The borders that have reopened are mainly in remote desert areas. Niger\u2019s key entryways for trade and commerce remain closed due to sanctions imposed by the regional bloc.<\/p>\n
The reopening of the land borders comes as defence chiefs from regional bloc ECOWAS are scheduled to start a two-day meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, to discuss the situation in Niger, where ECOWAS has threatened to use force if soldiers do not reinstate the elected president.<\/p>\n
A delegation from the regional bloc was also expected to arrive in Niger\u2019s capital Niamey on Wednesday to start talks with the junta, led by General Abdourahmane Tiani.<\/p>\n
Niger\u2019s coup was the seventh military takeover in less than three years in West and Central Africa, where some of the coup-hit countries have banded together in opposition to the rest of the 15-nation regional bloc.<\/p>\n
European countries started evacuating their citizens this week after Mali and Burkina Faso, also ruled by military juntas, said they would consider any regional intervention in Niger to be a declaration of war and would come to its defence.<\/p>\n
The first military planes carrying mostly European nationals landed in Paris and Rome on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings could have turned ugly but it still is nice to be back here,\u201d a French evacuee who gave his name as Charles told Reuters TV.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will see how things evolve over there in the coming days and weeks. For us, who care about it quite a lot, we will follow this closely,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
France, the United States, Germany, and Italy have troops in Niger on counterinsurgency and training missions, helping the army to fight groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State.<\/p>\n
There has been no announcement of troops being withdrawn so far. Germany\u2019s defence minister said on Wednesday that there were no concerns about the safety of German soldiers.<\/p>\n
Any Western military intervention to restore democracy must be ruled out, as it would be \u201cperceived as a new colonisation\u201d, said Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani.<\/p>\n
Niger is the world\u2019s seventh-biggest producer of uranium, the radioactive metal widely used for nuclear energy and treating cancer.<\/p>\n
The EU Commission said earlier this week that it had sufficient inventories of natural uranium to mitigate any short-term supply risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Niger announced overnight that it was reopening its borders with several of its neighbours, excluding Nigeria, a week after a coup that has been condemned by foreign powers. \u201cThe land and air borders with Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Libya and Chad are re-opened from August 1, 2023,\u201d a junta spokesperson said on state television. Nigeria […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-77855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/journalist101.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Nigerien-junta-leader-General-Abdourahamane-Tchiani.jpg?fit=770%2C513&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LVjE-kfJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77857,"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77855\/revisions\/77857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journalist101.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}