The BBC reports an emergency UN Security Council meeting yesterday, calling for:
the "swift deployment" of an international force to Mali.
The diplomacy appears to be a response to some reporting of both sides advancing.

In a twist that takes the "biscuit":
On Tuesday, African Union chairman Thomas Boni Yayi said Nato should send forces to Mali to fight the Islamists. He said the Malian conflict was a global crisis which required Nato to intervene, in the way it had done in Afghanistan to fight the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Nato troops should work alongside an African force in Mali, he said.
The African Union has sub-contracted ECOWAS to intervene, although without any money of other physical support. Ah, what is ECOWAS doing? I have looked through previous posts:

a) April 4th 2012 'ECOWAS is preparing a force up to 3,000'
b) April 27th force 'ready to go'
c) September 24th Mali agreed to host ECOWAS
d) November 12th 'ECOWAS agreed to deploy, six months to prepare'
e) December 2012 UNSC gives support to ECOWAS

The BBC from New York reports:
For logistical reasons the African force already approved by the UN was not expected to even begin its offensive before September or October...
Pathetic. I remain convinced this ECOWAS force will not deploy in Mali and even if it did it will never take the offensive. Now the African Union is throwing away its stance on no Western intervention, calling for NATO to fight in Mali!

Listening and reading the reporting it is almost as if Mali has been lost and AQ now has a new base - in a place far less hospitable than Afghanistan, the FATA and Somalia. As one expert has noted the "rebel north" is comparable in size to France (675k sq kilometers) or Texas (696k sq kms). Let me add somewhere we are familiar with, Afghanistan is 647k sq kms.