A mood of calm acceptance of "whatever happens, happens" reigned over Mopti, a poor river-island city in central Mali, after the country announced ex-Prime Minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (IBK) won a landslide victory in a presidential poll.

Among residents who proudly called their city "Venice of Mali," the trauma was still palpable when they mentioned their hair-breadth escape from conflicts in January last year as Islamic rebels stormed Konna, a small town 55 km north of Mopti, before being driven back by international intervention.

"Tourists have been shunning our region for at least four years. No whites came for tours, except occasionally a few journalists. I survived by doing small jobs here and there," said Hamidou Guindo, a young man in his 30s, who proposed "professional tourist services" for Xinhua reporters, showing his guide card issued by the Office of Tourism of Mopti.

"Before the conflicts, during good seasons in December and January when roads were not ruined by rains and climate was agreeable, I would be happily busy working with tourists without a single day of rest," he said.

Lying at the junction of the Niger and Bani rivers, Mopti used to be a must stay for pilgrims of the Malian culture.

With one-hour drive to its south, there is a tourism attraction called Djenne, which hosts a grand mosque built with earthen material, the biggest one of its kind across the sub-Saharian Africa.

About 580 km to its east is Gao, a very important archeological center for African history. Askia, who created the biggest and the last Songhoi Empire, was buried there. His grave, built in 1595 with a unique architecture, was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage.

Then 410 km to its north, Timbuktu stretches in the middle of dunes. As a hub of the Saharian trade in the Middle Ages, the city shelters several libraries where ancient Arabic manuscripts were kept.

The region of Mopti used to receive 100,000 to 125,000 international tourists or 50 percent to 60 percent of the national total each year, according to Moctar Ba, regional director of Mali's National Office of Tourism.

Restored mainly in the 2000s by the Malian government with the support of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, most of the cultural sites in northern Mali could have enjoyed a better visibility and received more visitors if the political-military crisis had been saved, Lassana Cisse, director of Mali's National Patrimony told Xinhua.

"In fact, ever since the 2003 Sahara hostage crisis, the number of tourists in Mali has started plunging," he said. "It hit the bottom with recent conflicts when radical Islamists took over the north and destroyed 12 of the 18 historic and religious landmarks in Timbuktu that are classified as World Heritage."

During the night from Friday and Saturday, the well-equipped Ganaga Hotel built in the 1980s by the French group Sofitel, received no more than four customers, two journalists and two American volunteers.

What Mopti lives mirrors the long existing ethnic tensions in Mali. Deriving its name from the Fulla word for gathering, Mopti is home to many ethnic residents, including Bambara, Songhai, Fula, Tuaregs, Bellasha, Bozos and Dogon, among others.

Across the country, ethnic tensions have been inflamed by the conflicts since Tuareg and Arab population from the north feel persecuted and marginalized by an administration controlled by ethnic groups from the south, while people in the south hate Tuareg radicals who waged war for independence.

Mahamadou Djeri Maiga, president of the negotiating committee composed of two Tuareg rebel groups which signed a ceasefire agreement with the government in June, also fled to Boukina Faso.

He told Xinhua that his men would not like to run the risk to return to central Mali as long as security conditions were not met.

Up till now, the rebels have showed respect for the Ouagadougou agreement by leaving the presidential election held over the last two months, so it is now up to the new authorities led by IBK to make gestures to respect the same agreement, such as an opening of talks within two months, commented Issa Njiaye, professor at University of Bamako.

The professor proposed a national conference that involves all communities in the country in the process of negotiations.

"Divided communities must rebuild trust before peace talks, so that reconstruction of the country could start," he told Xinhua.