Victoria Nuland Meets With Niger Junta Leaders
Nuland met with Moussa Salaou Barmou, who has previously received training from the US military
Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland traveled to Niger’s capital Niamey on Monday and held what she described as “difficult” talks with members of the junta that ousted Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum in a July 26 coup.
“Traveled to Niamey to express grave concern at the undemocratic attempts to seize power and urged a return to constitutional order,” Nuland wrote on X, formally known as Twitter.
Nuland spoke with reporters on the phone after her talks and said the “conversations were extremely frank and at times quite difficult because, again, we were pushing for a negotiated solution.” She said the coup leaders are “quite firm in their view on how they want to proceed, and it does not comport with the constitution of Niger.”
Nuland said she met with Moussa Salaou Barmou, who has declared himself Niger’s defense chief, and three other colonels. Journalist Nick Turse reported for The Intercept that Barmou had previously received military training from the US, something Nuland mentioned in the call with reporters.
“General Barmou, former Colonel Barmou, is somebody who has worked very closely with US Special Forces over many, many years,” she said. “So we were able to go through in considerable detail the risks to aspects of our cooperation that he has historically cared about a lot. So we are hopeful that that will sink in.”
The Biden administration has said it paused assistance to Niger but has not officially declared the situation a coup since that would require cutting off all aid. The US has been cooperating militarily with Niger for many years and has about 1,100 troops in the country, along with a major drone base.
The US has backed threats of military intervention to reinstate Bazoum made by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which is holding a second emergency summit on the coup this Thursday. Nuland did not mention potential military intervention in the call with reporters and was not asked about the possibility. She said the US hoped the junta would keep “the door open to diplomacy” but sounded doubtful that they would.
Nuland said she spoke with Bazoum by phone but was denied a meeting with the ousted leader, who is being held under house arrest. She was also denied a meeting with Niger’s declared leader, Gen. Abdourahmane Tiani. “So we were left to have to depend on Mr. Barmou to make clear, again, what is at stake,” she said.
Nuland said she also warned the junta against cooperation with Wagner, the Russian mercenary force. “I raised Wagner and its threat to those countries where it is present, reminding them that security gets worse, that human rights get worse when Wagner enters. I would not say that we learned much more about their thinking on that front,” she said.
https://news.antiwar.com/2023/08/07/victoria-nuland-meets-with-niger-junta-leaders/
And this: Wagner boss expresses 'joy' over Victoria Nuland
IOW - There laughing at Nuland's same old tricks.
They didnt allow her to meet the new Leader or the Former President, they basically told her to go pound sand,.!!
The constitution she is worrying about has been around only since 2010, the latest of a long string. Somehow it seems significant that the last big upheaval was in 2009, after Obama came along. Nuland seems upset that they aren't the pets she thought they were--or maybe it's about the uranium, which is pretty much the only asset of that country.
Well said, its about the Uranium for sure.
Well, it's been about the uranium since WWII. The English, the French, and us. It's the Nuland connection and reactions all around that look to me like a deeper story is lurking. For instance, the Wagner group also popping up, some of the other African countries suddenly all over the now deposed regime--how much were they helping before? Maybe Niger is the African Ukraine.
Good points of discussion.
Wherever Victoria Neuland shows up, that neocon female dog is always involved with "REGIME CHANGE". When the CIA and Neuland can't get their way they instigate a coup d'etat against a legitimately elected government and if it backfires they try to negotiate to still get their way. She has been involved with coup d'etats all over the world. Its because of her that there is war in Ukraine.
Aleksei Nalvany for example is a CIA/Neuland operative that was intended for REGIME CHANGE in Russia but that really backfired when the overwhelming evidence of sedition and treason exposed him for what he really is. Its something the western MSM refuse to discuss and choose to blame President Putin for jailing the opposition which is an outright lie. They are projecting, its our own corrupt government along with Joe Biden and the Deep State that are trying to jail President Trump in this country.
It was Neuland and the CIA that orchestrated a coup d'etat against the legitimately elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich in 2014 because he had no interest in having Ukraine join the EU, which messed up all the neocon/DS plans to illegally make Ukraine a NATO country. Remember that when President Gorbachev of Russia disolved the Warsaw Pact in the early 1990s, the condition for Ukraine was that it HAD TO REMAIN NEUTRAL and that no former Warsaw Pact nation would join NATO which would be a viewed as a threat to the Russian Federation. The Secretary of State James Baker in 1991 noted that NATO had no intention of moving ONE INCH towards the EAST, but our State Department had other plans. Since then NATO has moved over a thousand miles toward the east with the Russian Federation viewing this aggression as a national threat by the West. In the end when elections were held for a new Ukrainian President in 2014 to replace Yanukovich, Crimea and parts of the Donbass region in Ukraine comprised mainly of Russian-Ukrainians were NOT allowed to vote being that their majority would again elect a pro-Russia President. In essence, the Russian speaking Ukrainians NO LONGER HAD A COUNTRY as they could not elect the new Ukrainian President. As such, Putin reinstated Crimea into the Russian Federation as it was before 1959. Then the breakaway independent Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were formed in the Donbass region of Ukraine which made that territory NO LONGER part of Ukraine since 2014.
The Ukraine nazis were then tasked to kill as many Russian Ukrainians as they could. In the middle of winter they started with shutting off natural gas, water and electricity to the Donbass region then attacked defenseless villages and towns, murdering over 24,000 thousand citizens between 2014-2022 in the breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The Russian Ministry of Defence have located mass graves that these Ukraine nazis are responsible for and not even a word or acknowledgement from the EU. And its all because of that evil vicious neocon female dog Victoria Neuland!
Tried to keep it short, I went a little longer than I expected.
Yes, expanding on my gut feeling there...she is bad news. But she didn't want this guy overthrown, apparently. And then this instant flurry of other African states indicates they are on her side in some way. It might not be because of her neocon plans, but I don't think it's altruism for the poor people of Niger. Besides the obvious uranium lure, there's the ongoing intrigue of China buying into Africa.