Troops from a regional West African force are due to begin deploying within a week, the French prime minister has said. 
 
 Jean-Marc Ayrault said on Tuesday in Paris that the looming deployment meant French forces would not have to bear the burden of fighting in Mali for very long. 
 
 
 
 
 
 "France is today in the vanguard, but within a week African forces will start to deploy on the ground," he said. 
 
 Ayrault's comments come as President Francois Hollande said France will end its intervention in Mali only when stability has returned to the West African country. 
 
 "We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory," Hollande said in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. 
 
 His comments raise the prospects of a costly, drawn-out operation against the al-Qaeda-linked rebels in northern Mali. 
 
 France has deployed 750 soldiers to the country and defence sources said it planned to boost its presence to a total of 2,500 troops. 
 
 The United States is still assessing what military aid to give France, but has no plans to send US troops, defence secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday. 
 
 "There is no consideration of putting any American boots on the ground at this time," Panetta told a news conference in Lisbon. 
 
 Deployment details 
 
 West African army chiefs meanwhile met on Tuesday in Bamako to plan the roll-out of a UN-mandated, 3,300-strong regional intervention force in the former French colony. They plan to continue their talks on Wednesday. 
 
 "We are here today to speak about the engagement alongside our Malian brothers in arms, to liberate the north of Mali," Ivory Coast army chief General Soumaila Bakayoko said at the talks. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Al Jazeera's Mohammed Adow, reporting from the capital, Bamako, said the military chiefs of the West African bloc of nations, ECOWAS, were still meeting over the details of the deployment. 
 
 "What we are hearing is that the military chiefs [of ECOWAS] are deliberating over the different aspects of this deployment," he said. 
 
 "What they have announced is that the chief of the mission will be from Nigeria, and will lead around 3,300 troops. 
 
 
 
 "The forces will be supporting the French troops ... but they will have to be trained first before they go to the north, because they have previously worked as peacekeepers." 
 
 French warplanes have been hitting targets in various parts of Mali since Friday in support of Malian forces seeking to dislodge the rebels who last year seized control of its vast desert north and had advanced south. 
 
 Strongholds abandoned 
 
 The rebels have abandoned several key strongholds under the French onslaught. 
 
 
 
 "We brought a halt to the [rebel] offensive," Ayrault said, though he warned that the rebels' "determination remains intact". 
 
 
 
 France's National Assembly and senate on Tuesday each held a minute of silence in memory of a French helicopter pilot killed on Friday in Mali and another soldier killed Saturday in a failed attempt to rescue a French hostage held by the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab in Somalia. 
 
 
 
 At a military memorial service for the pilot, 41-year-old Damien Boiteux, at the Les Invalides military monument, Ayrault praised his "exceptional courage" and said he had "died for France". 
 
 
 
 "We pay homage to your commitment, that of a life devoted to the defence of our country. This commitment led to the ultimate sacrifice. It will not be forgotten," Ayrault said. ||||| BAMAKO/DUBAI France pledged on Tuesday to keep troops in Mali until stability returned to the West African country, raising the specter of a long campaign against al Qaeda-linked rebels who held their ground despite a fifth day of air strikes. 
 
 Paris has poured hundreds of soldiers into Mali and carried out 50 bombing raids since Friday in the Islamist-controlled northern half of the country, which Western and regional states fear could become a base for terrorist attacks in Africa and Europe. 
 
 Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that, despite French air support, Malian forces had not been able to dislodge Islamist fighters from the central Malian towns of Konna or Diabaly, just 350 km (220 miles) northeast of Bamako. 
 
 A column of French armored vehicles rolled northward from the dusty riverside capital of Bamako towards rebel lines on Tuesday, the first major northward deployment of ground troops. A military official declined to comment on their objective. 
 
 Thousands of African soldiers are due to take over the offensive. Regional armies are scrambling to accelerate an operation which was initially not expected until September and has been brought forward by France's surprise bombing campaign aimed at stopping a rebel advance on a strategic town last week. 
 
 President Francois Hollande, on a visit to the United Arab Emirates during which he sought Gulf states' financial backing for the African-led mission, suggested France would retain a major role in its former colony for months to come. 
 
 "We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory," Hollande told a news conference. 
 
 Paris has said it plans to deploy 2,500 soldiers to bolster the Malian army and work with the intervention force provided by West African states. 
 
 AFRICAN TROOPS 
 
 West African Defense chiefs met in Bamako on Tuesday to approve plans for the swift deployment of 3,300 regional troops, foreseen in a United Nations-backed intervention plan. After failing to reach a final agreement, they adjourned their talks until Wednesday. 
 
 Nigeria pledged to deploy soldiers within 24 hours, and Belgium said it was sending transport planes and helicopters to help, but West Africa's armies need time to become operational. 
 
 Mali's north, a vast and inhospitable area of desert and rugged mountains the size of Texas, was seized last year by an Islamist alliance combining al Qaeda's north African wing AQIM with splinter group MUJWA and the home-grown Ansar Dine rebels. 
 
 Any delay in following up on the French air bombardments of Islamist bases and fuel depots with a ground offensive could allow the insurgents to slip away into the desert and mountains, regroup and counter-attack. 
 
 The rebels, who French officials say are mobile and well armed, have shown they can hit back, dislodging government forces from Diabaly on Monday. 
 
 Residents said the town was still under Islamist control on Tuesday despite a number of air strikes that shook houses. 
 
 An eye witness near Segou, to the south, told Reuters he had seen 20 French Special Forces soldiers driving toward Diabaly. 
 
 In Konna, whose seizure on Thursday sparked French involvement, residents said Islamist fighters were camped just outside town. Army troops had also withdrawn after entering the town on Saturday. 
 
 Malians have largely welcomed the French intervention, having seen their army suffer a series of defeats by the rebels. 
 
 "With the arrival of the French, we have started to see the situation on the front evolve in our favor," said Aba Sanare, a resident of Bamako. 
 
 QUESTIONS OVER READINESS 
 
 Aboudou Toure Cheaka, a senior regional official in Bamako, said the West African troops would be on the ground in a week. 
 
 The original timetable for the 3,300-strong U.N.-sanctioned African force - to be backed by western logistics, money and intelligence services - did not initially foresee full deployment before September due to logistical constraints. 
 
 Senegal, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Guinea have all offered troops. Col. Mohammed Yerima, spokesman for Nigeria's Defense ministry, said the first 190 soldiers would be dispatched within 24 hours. 
 
 But Nigeria, which is due to lead the mission, has already cautioned that even if some troops arrive in Mali soon, their training and equipping will take more time. 
 
 Sub-Saharan Africa's top oil producer, which already has peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur and is fighting a bloody and difficult insurgency at home against Islamist sect Boko Haram, could struggle to deliver on its troop commitment of 900 men. 
 
 One senior government adviser in Nigeria said the Mali deployment was stretching the country's military. 
 
 "The whole thing's a mess. We don't have any troops with experience of those extreme conditions, even of how to keep all that sand from ruining your equipment. And we're facing battle-hardened guys who live in those dunes," said the adviser, who asked not to be named. 
 
 FRENCH LINING UP SUPPORT 
 
 France, which has repeatedly said it has abandoned its role as policeman of its former African colonies, said on Monday that the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Germany had also offered logistical support. 
 
 Fabius has said Gulf Arab states would help the Mali campaign, while Belgium said on Tuesday it would send two C130 transport planes and two medical helicopters following a request from Paris. 
 
 A meeting of donors for the operation was expected to be held in Addis Ababa at the end of January. 
 
 Security experts have warned that the multinational intervention in Mali, couched in terms of a campaign by governments against "terrorism", could provoke a jihadist backlash against France and the West, and African allies. 
 
 U.S. officials have warned of links between AQIM, Boko Haram in Nigeria and al Shabaab Islamic militants fighting in Somalia. 
 
 Al Shabaab, which foiled a French effort at the weekend to rescue a French secret agent it was holding hostage, urged Muslims around the world to rise up against what it called "Christian" attacks against Islam. 
 
 "Our brothers in Mali, show patience and tolerance and you will win. War planes never liberate a land," Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, al Shabaab's spokesman, said on a rebel-run website. 
 
 U.S. officials said Washington was sharing information with French forces in Mali and considering providing logistics, surveillance and airlift capability. 
 
 "We have made a commitment that al Qaeda is not going to find any place to hide," U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters as he began a visit to Europe. Panetta later said the U.S. had no plans to send troops to Mali. 
 
 One U.S. military source said the haphazard nature of French involvement reminded him of the U.S. entry into Afghanistan. 
 
 "I don't know what the French endgame is for this," the source said. "Air strikes are fine, but pretty soon you run out of easy targets. Then what do you do? What do you do when they head up into the mountains?" 
 
 (Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi, Felix Onuah in Abuja and Tim Cocks in Lagos, Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu, Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations,; Richard Valdmanis in Dakar, Joe Bavier in Abidjan, Jan Vermeylen in Brussels; Writing by Pascal Fletcher, Daniel Flynn and David Lewis; editing by Richard Valdmanis, Giles Elgood and Will Waterman) ||||| Joyous villagers in Ansongo, south of Gao, celebrate their liberation by French and Malian troops after 10 months of occupation by Islamic militants. France hopes to hand over the mission to an African-led contingent soon, but analysts say the West will have to provide logistical and intelligence support for years if the militants are to be denied a foothold in North Africa. (Kambou Sia / AFP/Getty Images / ) 
 
 French troops backing a Mali government campaign to retake the northern half of the country from Islamic militants have been cheered as liberators since their convoys rolled into historic Timbuktu this week and hundreds of paratroopers dropped from the sky to block the occupiers' escape. 
 
 As villagers celebrated with dance, song and cigarettes -- all banned by the fundamentalist invaders over the last 10 months -- French President Francois Hollande proclaimed his troops’ intervention a success and hinted that the task of sweeping out the last of the Al Qaeda-aligned militants would soon be handed over to African forces. 
 
 The international community is now scrambling to bolster the French-Malian battle to deny the militants a foothold in North Africa from which they could plot and carry out terrorist attacks: Western nations on Tuesday pledged more than $450 million in financing for a planned African-led contingent. Japan agreed to pitch in $120 million for refugee relief. Germany has promised more help transporting French troops to the battlefields, and Britain announced that it would send 240 troops to train and assist the regional fighters, including Mali’s beleaguered army. 
 
 But lessons learned in the Western intervention in Libya less than two years ago caution against a premature retreat by the French and their arm's-length U.S. and European allies, warn experts on the restive sub-Saharan Sahel region, which spans the breadth of the continent. 
 
 While the United Nations has endorsed the plans to deploy 3,300 troops from the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, those fighters lack training and familiarity with the challenging desert conditions that the veteran militants of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb navigate with confidence. 
 
 As the former colonial power in Mali and much of North Africa, France runs the risk of stirring resentment if it stays too long or appears to be reasserting its authority in the region. On the other hand, the experts say, Paris and its allies shouldn’t leave the newly liberated towns vulnerable to recurring waves of invasion and takeover by militants who are only scattered, not defeated. 
 
 “They are going to have to leave some kind of residual advisory effort after the bulk of their combat forces are withdrawn,” said Frederic Wehrey, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. While it would be prudent for France to power down once Malian government control has been restored, he said, trainers and logistical coordinators will be needed to guard against any return of regrouped fighters. 
 
 Wehrey said the militants cannot be defeated country-by-country. The region’s porous borders give them free range throughout the Sahel's archipelago of unstable states, and aggrieved minority tribes provide willing collaborators in their mission of mayhem. 
 
 Long-marginalized Tuareg nomads, flush with weapons from Libya, took advantage of a military coup against the government in Bamako last March to seize control of the desolate northern half of Mali. They were then elbowed aside by other, more militant Islamist forces that filtered into Mali after the collapse of Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi and setbacks in fighting against forces in Algeria, Nigeria and Somalia. 
 
 As the militants retreat to the remote desert reaches or escape over unguarded borders, the West has to plan for a “cat and mouse" game of tracking the would-be terrorists and disrupting their operations, said David Ottaway, a veteran Middle East correspondent and now a senior scholar at the Wilson Center international think tank in Washington. 
 
 The ECOWAS forces “are not ready to take on Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The French are going to have to stay involved, and we’re going to have to get involved in providing intelligence,” Ottaway said of the United States. 
 
 Unmanned surveillance aircraft that can track the militants’ movements are going to be essential to denying them a North Africa stronghold, Ottaway said. He pointed out reports from Washington-based intelligence sources this week that a base in Niger, Mali’s eastern neighbor, is on the drawing board to host Predator drones that can follow the flow of troops and weapons throughout the region. 
 
 Libya remains a dangerous redoubt of Islamic extremism even 15 months after Kadafi’s demise, mostly because of the failure of Western policymakers to anticipate what would happen after his regime fell, said Russell D. Howard, director of the Monterey Institute Terrorism Research and Education Program and a retired special forces brigadier general. Radical militias that protected the Kadafi regime simply slipped across the unpatrolled southern border, carrying off their replete arsenals to continue the fight elsewhere. 
 
 France must maintain a symbolic presence in Mali, but more important than the size is its capability to provide air support, training, logistics, intelligence and especially to track the elusive militants as they move about at night, Howard said. 
 
 “Being able to pursue, find and fix at night will be a game-changer,” Howard said of the prospects for defeating the militants in Mali and thwarting their relocation. 
 
 But there will be no lasting peace or stability in the region, the general said, as long as the social needs of minority communities are ignored and festering resentments draw them to the opportunistic Islamic extremists. 
 
 ALSO: 
 
 Egyptian general warns against continued unrest 
 
 Dozens of corpses found along river in Aleppo, Syria 
 
 Controversial Spanish doctor testifies in huge sports doping trial 
 
 A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. ||||| French soldiers deployed in an operation against Islamist militants in Mali ride in a military vehicle at an air base near Bamako, the capital. (Eric Feferberg / AFP/Getty Images / ) 
 
 WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is preparing to ferry hundreds of additional French troops to the North African country of Mali, bolstering a rapidly evolving military campaign in the latest conflict with Al Qaeda affiliates. 
 
 U.S. officials said they also were making plans to send drones or other surveillance aircraft and provide help with aerial refueling of French fighter jets, which bombed columns of Al Qaeda-allied militants in northern Mali for a fourth straight day Monday. 
 
 The Pentagon's moves reflect growing concern in Washington about rebel advances, and a decision by the Obama administration to back France's operation after months of inaction. French officials said they had halted the rebels' advance on Bamako, the capital, but insurgents later overran Malian forces in a town about 200 miles northeast of the capital. 
 
 PHOTOS: French troops in Mali 
 
 Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, speaking to reporters during a trip to Europe, said the U.S. was already providing the French with intelligence help, citing "a responsibility to go after Al Qaeda wherever they are." Defense officials said small numbers of U.S. troops might be sent to Mali and surrounding countries but that they would be limited to a support role. 
 
 "We have promised [France] that we will ... provide whatever assistance we can to try to help them," Panetta said. 
 
 As the Obama administration winds down the United States' long, costly war in Afghanistan, the focus of Western governments' terrorism concerns has shifted to places such as Yemen, Somalia and northern Nigeria. Once-stable Mali joined the list after Islamist rebels seized the northern half of the country after a military coup in March. According to U.S. officials, the militants set up training camps and increased coordination with militant groups elsewhere in Africa. 
 
 The militants imposed harsh Islamic law, including forced amputations and summary executions. 
 
 The rebels include hundreds of fighters from Al Qaeda's North African affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which U.S. officials have described as the terrorist network's best-financed branch. Flush with cash from kidnapping and smuggling operations, the fighters gained large stocks of military equipment after the 2011 fall of Moammar Kadafi in Libya. Weapons from Kadafi's regime flowed across the lawless Sahara into Mali. 
 
 U.S. officials say the Al Qaeda offshoot has between 800 and 1,200 fighters and that an unknown number also have joined in recent months from other African nations and Europe. 
 
 "They've increased in numbers because they're able to operate a little more openly," one U.S. defense official said before the French campaign began. "A lot of folks have seen the success they've had, and that draws in people from the region as well as foreigners who've come in from outside the region." 
 
 France, the former colonial power in Mali, has a large North African immigrant population and has long feared that Islamists could use their base in Mali to plot attacks on French soil. Eight French hostages reportedly are being held by Islamists in northern Mali. 
 
 U.S. officials until recently didn't regard the threat with great urgency, but the rebel advance last week appeared to force France's hand — and heightened American concern. According to local news reports, one group of fighters attacked the town of Konna and moved toward government-controlled Mopti while a second group advanced to the west, showing a level of coordination that analysts hadn't seen before. 
 
 "Until a week ago, I and others were telling people we don't really think that there's much of a threat here, because these [militants] have very parochial interests and we don't think they've got the military capability," said Michael Shurkin, a former CIA analyst who worked on Mali and is now an expert at the Rand Corp. think tank. 
 
 "What France saw this last week just scared it. It saw real capability, audacity and capacity," he said. 
 
 French President Francois Hollande swiftly sent 550 troops to Mali, mainly to Bamako to secure the airport and, if necessary, evacuate the roughly 6,000 French citizens living there, officials said. France has asked the Pentagon for help in quickly moving another 500 to 600 troops and their equipment into the country, a U.S. defense official said. 
 
 U.S. military planners were devising options for using Air Force cargo planes to move the forces from France to staging areas outside Mali, possibly including the neighboring countries of Niger and Burkina Faso, the official said. 
 
 "We're going to do it," the official said. "We just don't know what platforms yet," referring to the types of aircraft. 
 
 The United States for several years conducted training operations with Mali's armed forces but was legally required to suspend all assistance to the Malian government after the March coup. A U.S. official said that restriction was delaying assistance to the French operation, but Obama administration lawyers were looking at ways around the prohibition. 
 
 Last month the United Nations signed off on a West African-led plan to send 3,300 regional troops to help Malian forces retake the north. France is putting pressure on the West African bloc to speed the deployment of its soldiers.
– France has launched a ground operation in Mali, and its troops should be in direct combat with radical Islamists "within hours," military officials tell the AP. The incursion began overnight, with troops pressing from the capital into rebel-held northern territory. France also announced yesterday that it was boosting its troop presence from 800 to 2,500, another sign that it's leading an offensive that was originally to be led by Mali's African neighbors. West African troops are set to arrive within a week, France's prime minister said yesterday. "France is in the vanguard, but within a week African forces will start to deploy on the ground," he said, according to al-Jazeera. Germany is providing military aircraft to transport those African troops, along with $1.3 million in humanitarian aid. The US has offered to help as well, though Leon Panetta said it won't send troops—direct military aid to Mali's coup-installed government is illegal, the Washington Post points out. The militants, meanwhile, have actually seized more territory despite the assault, with their fighters embedding themselves in the civilian population, a French military spokesman said. Today they also attacked a BP natural gas field in neighboring Algeria, kidnapping eight people.