EU leaves military training in Mali suspended, stops short of terminating mission

BRUSSELS - The EU will leave its military training mission in Mali suspended, but will not terminate it despite a decision by the military junta in Bamako to pull out of a multinational force in West Africa's Sahel region, the bloc's top diplomat said.

"We decided to reaffirm our decision of suspending operational training to form units of the Malian armed forces ..., but we are not canceling this mission," the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters in Brussels after a meeting of the bloc's defence ministers on Tuesday.