A \"terrorist\" state must not be allowed to take root in Africa\'s Sahel region after rebels and Islamists seized the northern half of Mali, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday. \"Everything must be done to avoid the establishment of a terrorist or Islamic state in the heart of the Sahel,\" Sarkozy told I-Tele television. \"I don\'t think that it is up to France\" to intervene militarily to dislodge the Mali rebels but Paris could \"help\" in such an operation, he added.