France Rules Out Sending Troops to Mali as Rebels Proclaim Cease-Fire Dibidani Market in Bamako, Mali, on Thursday. France on Thursday ruled out a "military solution" in its former colony of Mali to counter rebels in the north who announced that they had achieved their territorial objectives and sought outside backing for a secessionist state they call Azawad. The declaration by the main Tuareg rebel group on their Web site came after a separate group of Islamic rebel fighters seized the ancient city of Timbuktu over the weekend and was quoted by local officials as saying they planned to impose Islamic law there. The Tuareg rebels represent one faction of fighters in the desert north of landlocked Mali who took advantage of military coup in Bamako, the southern capital, to press their own separatist campaign, seizing a string of settlements with lightning speed. The midranking officers who overturned a democratically elected government in Bamako did so because, they said, they were not being given the weapons to fight the separatist rebels in the north. In its statement, the rebellious National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad said that it had decided "to unilaterally proclaim the end of military operations as of midnight on Thursday April 5." The rebels said they had achieved "the complete liberation" of the territory they claim. The statement invited outside powers to "guarantee the people of Azawad against all aggression by Mali." The move reflected the effective division of the country between the south, controlled by midranking officers who overthrew what had been seen as an Africa democratic model last month, and the rebels in the north, who have been strengthened by an influx of arms and fighters since the collapse of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi's rule in Libya. In Paris, the French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé, told reporters that there would be "no military solution with the Tuaregs. There needs to be a political solution. He urged regional powers like Algeria, Mauretania and others to press for a political settlement. The rebel takeover has deepened Western concerns that Islamic militants could turn the remote and poverty-stricken reaches of northern Mali into a redoubt for Al Qaeda. According to Agence France-Presse Mr. Juppé said France would not send its own troops to oppose the rebellion. But, he said, it would offer logistical support for a regional force if one were created to support the Bamako authorities specifically against Islamists linked to an Al Qaeda affiliate called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb while negotiations got under way with secular Tuaregs. Military commanders from the regional grouping known as Ecowas, which has suspended Mali, met on Thursday in Ivory Coast to discuss their contributions to a 2,000-strong standby force to be created for possible intervention in Mali, The Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, Iyad Ag Ghali, the leader of the Islamic rebel group known as Ansar ud-Din, said that following the proclamation of Islamic law in Timbuktu, women would be required to wear veils, thieves would be punished by having their hands severed and adulterers would be stoned to death, according to local officials and a radio journalist quoted by The A.P... Separately, Mali's main political parties in Bamako said they would not take part in a national convention called by the military officers who ousted the nation's democratically elected leaders on March 22, The A.P. said.