The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) signaled on Monday that it had rejected a proposal by Niger’s military junta to hold elections within three years, raising the political tensions which have lingered since the country’s July coup.

A delegation from ECOWAS, West Africa’s main regional bloc, arrived Saturday in Niamey to discuss diplomatic paths towards undoing the July 26 coup, following comments from ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security Abdel-Fatau Musah in which he threatened military intervention and stated that “the D-Day is also decided.”

The military junta previously refused entry to a joint African Union-UN-ECOWAS delegation, but on Sunday junta leader General Abdourahamane Tiani said in an address that coup leaders do not want war and remain “open to dialogue,” while continuing to insist on the lengthy three-year timeline towards reinstituting democratic rule.

On Monday, however, Musah commented to several news outlets that the junta’s timeline was “unacceptable” and that ECOWAS’s position remains unchanged. He told the Nigerian TV program Sunrise Daily, “ECOWAS is not going to engage in endless haggling over restoration of constitutional order in [Niger]. [The coup leaders] have no legality, no legal basis for them, to hold the people of Niger to ransom and then dictating their own transition timetable.”

ECOWAS previously imposed sanctions on Niger in response to the military coup, and the conditions of Bazoum’s detention as well as the treason charges leveled against him have drawn ire from the international community.

Musah reaffirmed that a military intervention by ECOWAS remains a last resort, and that ongoing discussions would determine what the bloc’s next steps will be. Tiani in his Sunday address threatened that such an intervention would “not be the walk in the park that some people seem to think.”