The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on Sunday set up a committee of three leaders to negotiate with Niger’s military junta on a transition to democratic rule and to consider easing sanctions. A commission from Benin, Togo and Sierra Leone would engage with the Niger regime’s CNSP (National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland) leadership to decide on progress towards a short transition and other conditions for lifting sanctions, ECOWAS said at a summit in Nigeria’s capital Abuja. “Based on the outcomes of the engagement by the committee of heads of state with the CNSP, the authority will progressively ease the sanctions imposed on Niger,” ECOWAS Commission President Omar Touray told the closing of the summit. “Failure by the CNSP to comply with the outcomes of engagement with the committee, ECOWAS shall maintain all sanctions,” he added. Niger in July became the latest ECOWAS member to undergo a coup when soldiers from the presidential guard detained President Mohamed Bazoum and set up what they called a transitional government, one of a series of government overthrows in West Africa’s Sahel region.
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