Mali's interim government on Monday said it will take 24 months from March 2022 for the country to transition to democratic rule after an August 2020 coup.
The West African country's military leaders have been under pressure to hold elections since they toppled the government and failed on a promise to hold elections in February, causing a rift with former colonizer France and prompting sanctions from regional body ECOWAS.
"The duration of the transition is set at 24 months," interim government spokesman Abdoulaye Maiga said on national television, with a start date of March 26, 2022.
Mali's putsch leaders and regional heads of state have been at odds over a proposed five-year election timeline that was then revised to two - a delay still deemed too long by ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States.
West African heads of state met in Ghana's capital Accra over the weekend to discuss the situation and agreed not to lift sanctions crippling the economy unless interim leaders proposed a shorter transition.
(The story corrects revised transition timeline to two years instead of three, paragraph 4.)
(Reporting by Bate Felix; Writing by Sofia Christensen; Editing by Richard Pullin and Grant McCool)
