A spokesman for the main Tuareg rebel group which recently seized the three largest areas in Mali's north says it has declared a ceasefire, one day after the UN Security Council called for an end to violence in the west African nation.
The ceasefire comes as Mali's military rulers have postponed a national meeting on the troubled country's political future after last month's coup.
Moussa Ag Assarid, a Paris-based spokesman for the fighters' National Movement for the Liberation of the AZAWAD (MNLA), said on Thursday that the group was ceasing military operations because it had reached its goal.
"Since the day before yesterday when our units reached Douentza, which we consider to be the frontier [of the AZAWAD region], the military offensive is declared over," Assarid said, without giving further details.
Thursday's ceasefire declaration came on the same day West African military chiefs met in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to discuss the possible deployment of a regional force to deal with the crisis in Mali.
Fifteen chiefs of staff from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) - as well as French and US officers - attended the talks chaired by Ivorian junior defence minister Paul Koffi Koffi.
Ivory Coast holds the rotating presidency of the bloc.
The MNLA statement asked the international community to protect AZAWAD, but African nations and world bodies have unanimously rejected the idea of Mali's north seceding.
Malian junior army officers ousted the democratically elected government of President Amadou Toure on March 22, ostensibly in protest at the government's failure to arm them to rein in the Tuareg rebellion in the north.
But since the coup, the Tuareg rebels - numbering only about 1,000 fighters, according to French foreign minister Alain Juppe - have conquered territory after territory and are now said to be controlling an area larger than France.
