Security Council diplomats thought the plan was both too imprecise and too drawn out in its timetable, according to a diplomat on the council who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Image The Islamists allied with Al Qaeda appear to have gained a firm military hold in the north, and have subdued the local population with a brutal application of Shariah law. Credit... The New York Times

The diplomat said the group had been asked to go back to the drawing board. In addition, Malian military officials have expressed hostility to the idea of significant outside help, insisting, contrary to the evidence so far, that they can handle the task of retaking the north themselves.

The plan by the Economic Community does little more than note that the critical end of the operation would be the “launching of operations of the Mali security forces to regain the north with support” of the bloc. That lack of detail drew critical scrutiny from the Security Council, the diplomat said. “There was a feeling you need to have more thorough and more adapted planning,” he said.

In Mali, officially there are no relations between the two parts of the divided country. But the Bamako government recently instituted a new Department of Religious Affairs, in what has been interpreted as a nod to the Islamists who control the north.

And individual citizen initiatives, like the trip organized by the Coalition for Mali, have been on the rise. The delegation — which included Malian elected officials, development specialists and members of nongovernment organizations — made the trip from Bamako two weeks ago.

Some of the delegates were surprised by the supplicatory tone of the Islamists, many of them religiously indoctrinated guerrilla fighters used to living lives of isolation in the desert.

“There are so many things that the state does, that they cannot do,” Mr. Maïga said. “Run the water system, the electricity, schools.” In Kidal, there is electricity one night a week at most, he said, and the same was true for water and telephone service.