FRANCE-POLITICS-CONFLICT-MALI

Admiral Edouard Guillaud, French army chief of staff, leaves after a meeting on the situation in Mali gathering ministers and members of parliament, at the Hotel Matignon, on March 25, 2013, in Paris. Mali descended into chaos in the wake of a March 2012 coup, as Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels capitalised on the power vacuum to seize a Texas-sized triangle of desert territory in the north. France launched its intervention in its former colony on January 11 to stop the Islamists from advancing on the capital, Bamako. AFP PHOTO / JACQUES DEMARTHON (Photo credit should read JACQUES DEMARTHON/AFP via Getty Images)