General Abdourahamane Tiani

Junta leader General Abdourahamane Tiani has fallen out with companies promoting potential uranium mines over the pace of their development...

Severing military ties with the United States on 16 March three months after France closed its embassy in Niamey General Abdourahamane Tiani's Conseil national pour la sauvegarde de la patrie (CNSP) is shifting its security and diplomatic focus away from western powers towards Russia and to a lesser extent Iran...

After France and the EU criticised General Abdourahamane Tiani's coup the Niger regime ordered an end to their military presence and security partnerships and opened talks with Moscow...

And the US has also been working hard to hang on to its drone bases in Niger nudging General Abdourahamane Tiani's junta towards an accommodation with Ecowas that would facilitate continuing American defence collaboration (AC Vol 65 No 2 What hope for the juntas' promised elections...

The regime's self-confidence will be felt more widely across the Sahel encouraging Burkina Faso's junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré and General Abdourahamane Tiani's Conseil national pour la sauvegarde de la patrie (CNSP) in Niger (AC Vol 64 No 17 General Tiani opens the bidding)...

But it was obvious that this presence cannot be indefinitely maintained with the risk that General Abdourahamane Tiani might blockade the French bases...

Arriving in Niamey on 19 August former Nigerian head of state General Abdusalami Abubakar ECOWAS Commission president Omar Alieu Touray and the Sultan of Sokoto Muhammadu Sa'adu Abubakar III met with junta chief Gen Abdourahamane Tiani and his prime minister Ali Mahamane Lamine Zeine...

While attempts by ECOWAS officials and the United States to meet with the junta were rebuffed last week a group of Islamic scholars from northern Nigeria held talks with coup leader Gen Abdourahmane Tiani on 12-13 August later stating that 'both parties agreed to intensify the option of dialogue in resolving the political crisis...

Yet General Abdourahamane Tiani's Conseil National pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie (CNSP) junta may calculate that they can drag out any negotiations having survived the first ECOWAS deadline of 6 August without triggering military action...

' He didn't explain how that translates into pressure on Generals Abdourahamane Tiani and Salifou Mody without playing into the junta's hands by fuelling the sense among Nigériens that they are being victimised...

His saviour then was Gen Abdourahmane Tiani the commander of the 2 000-strong presidential guard the same man who detained Bazoum on 26 July and has now been proclaimed president and head of Niger's Conseil national pour la sauvegarde de la patrie (CNSP) junta...

NIAMEY JUNTA TESTS REGIONAL RESOLVE ON COUPS West African leaders' hard-line stance towards General Abdourahamane Tiani's military junta in Niamey which is holding President Mohamed Bazoum and his family prisoner in the presidential residence risks serious confrontation with the putschists...