Coup leaders in Niger Republic on Monday evening doubles down in its consolidation of power, naming Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine as the country’s new Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said on diplomacy is the best option for the international community to deal with the coup crisis in Niger.
In a statement read out on national television by Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, the junta also named Lieutenant-Colonel Habibou Assoumane as Niger’s new Commander of the Presidential Guard.
Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine held the position of cabinet director in 2001, then Finance Minister in 2002 under former President Mamadou Tandja. He also served as Finance Minister until Tandja was overthrown in a coup d’etat in 2010.
In preferring diplomacy as a way out of the Niger Republic crisis, Blinken told French Radio RFI: “Diplomacy is certainly the preferred way of resolving this situation.
“It is ECOWAS’ current approach. It is our approach.”
Towards this option in reinstating the ousted democratically elected president Mohamed Bazoum, who was detained last week, the second-ranking U.S. diplomat met Niger’s military leaders on Monday to press to reverse the coup.
But she reported no headway a day after the junta ignored an ultimatum from the West African bloc.
Victoria Nuland, who is the acting Deputy Secretary of State, said she met for more than two hours with chiefs of the military who on July 26 ousted Mohamed Bazoum, a Western ally.
She said the coup leaders refused to let her meet with the ousted President.
She described the talks as “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” but that she offered “a number of options” to exit the crisis and restore the relationship with the United States, which like other Western nations has suspended aid over the coup.
“This was a first conversation in which the United States was offering its good offices if there is a desire on the part of the people who are responsible for this to return to the constitutional order,” she told reporters by telephone before flying out.
“I would not say that we were in any way taken up on that offer.”
