A former US ambassador to Mali has told the BBC that France that paid ransom money to free hostages and the funds ended up bolstering Islamist groups it is now fighting.
Vicki Huddleston said France paid $17m (£10.75m) to free hostages seized from a uranium mine in Niger in 2010.
She said other European countries, including Germany, had also paid ransoms amounting to nearly $90m.
France has always denied that it pays ransoms for the release of hostages.
It is struggling to maintain order two weeks after French-led troops began an assault on Islamist militants who took over large parts of northern Mali.
On Friday, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a group of soldiers in the northern town of Gao, injuring one of them, in an attack claimed by an al-Qaeda offshoot.
Meanwhile, army infighting in the capital left one person dead and five injured when heavily-armed regular soldiers clashed with elite “Red Beret” paratroopers at their base in the capital Bamako.
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