Mauritania's COD rejects dialogue with President

The Mauritanian Coordination of Democratic Opposition (COD), a major opposition coalition working against the regime of President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz, has turned down an initiative announced earlier by the head of People's Progressive Coalition Party, Massoud Ould Belkhair, to establish a dialogue between the opposition and the president. Sources informed Arabstoday that opposition leaders met Saturday to discuss Belkhair's initiative, and saw no benefit in dialogue with the regime. Opposition groups have reportedly decided to resort to the streets again by next week, which is expected to escalate the desert nation's political crisis even more. Arabstoday sources revealed that opposition leaders also discussed security developments in neighbouring Mali, especially amid the considerable rise in the number of Malian refugees who are resorting to Mauritania. According to United Nations World Food Program (WFP), 71,799 Malian refugees fled the ongoing violence seeking asylum in M’bera camp in Mauritania. WFP reports put the number of Malian refugees arriving refugee camps on a daily basis to 400. Being a poor country, the flow of refugees to Mauritania poses a serious challenge on its own. WFP assessed food insecurity in Mauritanian households at 25 percent. According to the UN food programme, grain production is down by 46 percent. Mali, once a beacon of stability in west Africa, was thrown into chaos by the March 22 coup, which allowed ethnic Tuareg separatists and Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists to sweep across the north in a rapid offensive. The Islamists have since chased the Tuareg out of key towns, imposed sharia law, and last week destroyed ancient Muslim shrines they deemed un-Islamic in the UN world heritage-listed desert city of Timbuktu. With rising food prices, Mauritanians are suffering from a scarcity of resources. They cannot afford to share food stuffs with arriving refugees, since the current WFP refugee operation in Mauritania is suffering from a $9 million shortage. An estimated 1.5 million children are believed to be facing starvation in the Sahel region. More and more Mauritanians are taking to the streets to protest the lack of water, with some villagers even travelling to the capital to demonstrate in front of the presidential palace, according to news sources. The COD is expected to issue a statement soon, in which the opposition leaders will thank Belkhair for his efforts to find a solution to the country's internal conflicts, but they will say they do not trust the regime, citing events in 2008 where Abdel Aziz signed an agreement with the opposition to transfer power to a civilian administration shortly after the coup he led against former president Ould Sheikh Abdullah. Some observers say that the opposition might have received Belkhair's initiave more positively if President Abdel Aziz had endorsed it himself. The last popular protests organised by the opposition took place on June 23. The initial plan was to hold a sit-in in the streets until Abdel Aziz stepped down, but the demonstration was cracked down on by the regime's security forces the same day, which the opposition said ould not deter them from toppling the regime. Amid the protests against the current regime, coupled with a refugee crisis at a tipping point, fuelled by the repercussions of Mali’s military coup, questions swirl around whether this latest drought might affect the political stability of the Sahel country.