New AU Chair: Intervention in Mali Should Not Worsen Unrest

The incoming head of the African Union Commission, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, said on Saturday she supported military intervention in Mali as long as it did not worsen insecurity there.

"If there is a need for it ... as long as it's done in a way that does not cause, create more problems than there are," she said when asked if she approved sending troops in to confront al-Qaida-linked Islamist militants controlling northern Mali.

The United Nations Security Council approved a resolution Friday urging West African nations to speed up international military intervention in Mali.

Dlamini-Zuma was speaking upon her arrival from South Africa in Ethiopia, the headquarters of the AU. She is to take over officially on Monday from Jean Ping of Gabon, who has chaired the commission since 2008.

She will visit Mali on Friday to meet with a regional working group established to respond to the ongoing crisis.

In March a group of soldiers seized power in the capital Bamako, ousting president Amadou Toumani Toure in a country traditionally heralded for its strong democracy.

The resulting chaos opened the way for Tuareg separatist rebels in alliance with radical Islamists to occupy the vast northern region. The Tuaregs were quickly sidelined and the extremist groups, including al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, have imposed strict sharia law.

Dlamini-Zuma was elected in July in a historic vote that placed a woman at the head of the African Union's executive body for the first time.

Since she took just over 70 percent of the vote, observers have said she is inheriting a divided AU, but Dlamini-Zuma said her majority win suggests she is already unifying the bloc.

"We are now unifying and since I was elected everybody has supported, everybody has rallied, there is lots of good will, so I don't see any divisions right now," she said, dismissing the notion that as a non-French speaking African she could alienate Francophone countries.

"I'm here as an African and I'll be treating everybody as an African, irrespective of where they come from," she said.

Dlamini-Zuma inherents a roster of continental crises, including the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where neighboring Rwanda is accused of supporting rebels, and Somalia, where AU forces continue to combat Islamist extremists.

The AU Commission chair is re-elected every four years by member states.