U.N. Envoy Sees Difficult Mali Election Campaign

The U.N. envoy to the Sahel region on Wednesday warned of a difficult election campaign ahead in Mali, pointing in particular to the problem of ensuring refugees could vote and the need to improve security.

Romano Prodi, a former European Commission president and former Italian prime minister, also said there had been no "definitive" conclusion to the military conflict since arms were still widely available.

Prodi said the presidential vote was an important milestone but would be followed by even more complex parliamentary elections that would have to deal with demands for regional autonomy and other local issues.

"The presidential election is a first step to a political solution," Prodi, who was appointed by the United Nations in October 2012, said at a conference on the Sahel organised by the CESI think-tank in Rome.

"The campaign will be difficult," he said.

He also said the international community needed to boost aid "so that a healthy economy can replace a criminal economy truly without borders in the Sahel".

Campaigning for the July 28 presidential election began on Sunday, with the nation struggling to move on from war and return to desperately needed constitutional order after an 18-month political crisis.

The ballot will be the first since a coup in March last year that ousted the democratically elected president, just months before he was due to step down at the end of his final term in office.

The transitional government lifted a nearly six-month state of emergency on Saturday, marking what officials hope will be a gradual return to normality ahead of the nationwide polls.

But critics of the process argue that it is being rushed and, far from restoring democracy, it threatens to plunge the deeply divided west African nation further into chaos.