Mali negotiations: Rebels cause breakdown

BAMAKO, Mali, March 29 (UPI) -- A plane carrying West African leaders to Mali to talk with leaders of last week's coup turned around in flight when people crowded the runway, witnesses said.

The delegation's plane was to land at the airport in Mali's capital, Bamako, but it returned to the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan where the delegates conferred on their own, the BBC reported Thursday.

The contingent, led by Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States [Ecowas], was to meet in Bamako with three other heads of state.

Scores of people supporting coup leader Amadou Sanogo flooded the airport runway, chanting: "Shame on Ecowas. Mali is for us," witnesses told the BBC.

Sanogo convinced them to evacuate the runway but by then the plane had already turned around.

"The meeting [in Bamako] was canceled for security reasons," said Ivory Coast's Minister of African Integration Adama Bictogo, who had flown in earlier. "When we arrived this morning we saw that the security hadn't been organized and that around 100 people had managed to get on the tarmac. This prevented the plane from landing, and there was hostility in the air."

Ousted President Amadou Toumani Toure -- nicknamed ATT -- is in Mali and said he is free and in good health.

"I think the most important thing today is that we should, through consensus, find a way out of this crisis. The most important thing is not ATT, not the man. What is important is democracy, our institutions, Mali," Toure said.