Mali PM blasts France

Mali’s prime minister lashed out Saturday at former colonizer France, the U.N. secretary-general and many people in between, saying that the tumultuous country had been “stabbed in the back” by the French military withdrawal. In the same remarks, Abdoulaye Maiga praised the “exemplary and fruitful cooperation between Mali and Russia.”

Maiga was directly criticizing U.N. Secretary-general Secretary-general Antonio Guterres by the fourth sentence of his speech to the General Assembly. And he slammed what he called France’s “unilateral decision” to relocate its remaining troops to neighboring Niger amid deteriorating relations with Mali’s two-time coup leader, Col. Assimi Goita.

While it was Goita and his allies who overthrew a democratically elected president by military force two years ago, Mali’s prime minister repeatedly referred to a “French junta” throughout his speech Saturday.