Fabius confirms French withdrawal from Mali

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed here Thursday that France would begin withdrawing some of its 4,000-man force deployed in Mali as early as April, but he warned this would not take place overnight. Speaking on "RTL" radio here, Fabius repeated his government's position that it "had no vocation to stay eternally in Mali." France intervened in that country at the request of the Malian government on January 10 to stem a movement to take over the country by Islamist-led radical groups, sometimes allied with disgruntled Tuarek tribesmen. The French operation, supported now by thousands of Malian, Chadian and other African troops has pushed the rebels far to the north in the mountainous zones of Mali. Combat is still ongoing and a fourth French soldier was killed in fighting on Wednesday. "Beginning in April, where will be a start of a drawdown of French troops in Mali...That does not mean we are going to leave from one day to the next, "Fabius said, but reiterating a French desire to leave Mali once the job is done. He said he believed that the search and destroy missions for jihadists in the north of Mali would be finished "in a few weeks" and that will allow for some troop withdrawals. The Foreign Minister also confirmed to "RTL" that a number of leading "terrorist chiefs" had been killed during the operations in the north, but he would not name any prominent leaders of the Islamist movements who had died. He remarked that DNA testing was to be carried out on some of the bodies to see if they were indeed very prominent leaders of the Islamist groups like Abu Zeid or Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a well-known Algerian jihadist