European Union foreign ministers decided to lay the legal groundwork for sanctions on coup leaders in Niger but reserved judgment on whether they would support military action by a regional force to restore the ousted government. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said sanctions would mirror those applied by West African regional body ECOWAS and would include humanitarian exemptions. "We don't want sanctions to become an additional punishment for the world's second-poorest country," he said after a meeting in the Spanish city of Toledo, where the EU ministers also tried to digest news of another coup this week, in Gabon. (https://neuters.de/world/africa/eu-ministers-tackle-niger-coup-response-spain-meeting-2023-08-30/) The July 26 coup in Niger was a major blow to EU efforts to work with West African countries to fight Islamist militants in the Sahel region - a policy already hit by a string of other military takeovers in the region in recent years. Earlier this month, ECOWAS pledged to enforce sanctions, travel bans and asset freezes on those preventing the return to power of Niger's democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum.
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