Arab and Tuareg rebel leaders from crisis-torn northern Mali told a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation Monday they want to resume talks with the government.

"Even if we have to go to the planet Mars to quickly resume the dialogue with the Malian government... we are ready," said Mohamed Maouloud Ould Ramadane of the Arab Movement of Azawad (MAA) after meeting the Security Council delegation.

 A year after French troops sent Islamic militants scattering in Mali, a U.N. Security Council delegation is in the African country to weigh the challenges faced by the undermanned, African-led peacekeeping mission there.

Gerard Araud, France's top representative on the Security Council and the head of the delegation, told reporters after arrival late Saturday in the capital Bamako that the delegation was to visit through to Monday, "with the aim of backing stabilization in the country and action".

The U.S. military's partnership with France in Africa is "indispensable" in the fight against extremist groups in the Sahel region, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Friday.

During a visit to Washington, Le Drian said "terrorist groups are circulating across the whole Sahara-Sahel area and terrorist acts could put our own security at risk."

A French counter-terrorism offensive in northern Mali's Timbuktu region ended on Friday with 11 Islamist militants killed and a French soldier wounded, military sources inside the operation told Agence France Presse.

"The French military operation in the Timbuktu region is completed. Eleven terrorists were killed. A French soldier was wounded but his life is not in danger," said an official from France's Operation Serval military mission in its former colony.

French forces have carried out two night-time counter-terrorism operations in rebel-infested northern Mali, military sources in the west African nation said on Thursday.

A foreign military source in Bamako said troops targeted the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and the Signatories in Blood, an armed unit founded by fugitive jihadist commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar.

Five members of the U.N. mission in Mali were injured Monday when their vehicle ran over a landmine planted in the northeastern rebel bastion of Kidal, the stabilization mission said.

"This (Monday) morning a MINUSMA (U.N. stabilization mission in Mali) vehicle ran over a mine" 30 kilometers (20 miles) from Kidal, the statement sent via Twitter said.

Malian soldiers and international forces paraded through the capital Bamako on Monday during a public holiday marking the 53rd anniversary of the founding of the west African nation's army.

Malian soldiers were joined in the Boulevard de l'Independance by U.N. peacekeepers, members of the European Union mission training Mali's army and troops from Operation Serval, France's military mission which ousted armed jihadists from its former colony last year.

A unit of Chinese soldiers arrived in Mali on Thursday to strengthen the United Nations peacekeeping force in the troubled west African nation's rebel-infested north, sources told Agence France Presse.

A foreign diplomatic source in the capital Bamako said 245 Chinese troops would join a 150-strong contingent which has been stationed since December in Gao, the largest city in Mali's northern desert and the target of sporadic Islamist violence.

President Francois Hollande voiced confidence on Tuesday that Europe would back French efforts to end the unprecedented sectarian violence in the Central African Republic.

France sent in troops more than a month ago to its mineral-rich but impoverished former colony after a coup fueled more instability in the notoriously volatile nation and led to violence pitting Christians against Muslims.

The leaders of Mali and Mauritania on Sunday signed an accord to boost military cooperation and information sharing in the battle against "armed groups or terrorists" plaguing the west African neighbors.

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, elected in August 2013 after months of turbulence in which Islamists seized the northern half of his country, signed the deal on a state visit to Nouakchott.