Rebels appeal for US mediation

2008-02-18 08:21

Lagos - A rebel group from Nigeria's oil producing Niger Delta has written an open letter to United States President George W Bush, who is in Africa, asking him to mediate talks with the Nigerian government.

Bush was not due to stop in Nigeria during his tour of five African nations and there had been no international mediators involved in the Nigerian government's attempts to negotiate with splintered rebel forces in the Niger Delta.

US diplomats were not available for comment. Niger Delta militants often made appeals to the international community, but Nigeria had treated the unrest in the delta as an internal matter and no foreign power had publicly questioned that.

Nigeria was the fifth largest supplier of oil to the US, which had cultivated good relations with the Nigerian government.

Okah extradited to Nigeria

The US government criticised the disputed elections that brought President Umaru Yar'Adua to power last year, but quickly laid the matter to rest and engaged with him.

The open letter to Bush came from a faction of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which was angry over the fate of its leader, Henry Okah, who was deported on Thursday from Angola, where he was facing gun-running charges.

The MEND said on Friday Okah had been extradited to Nigeria and the state-run Angolan news agency said he had been handed over to Nigerian authorities, but the Nigerian government had yet to comment on his whereabouts or what would happen to him. There had been no official confirmation that he was in Nigeria.

Okah's faction of the MEND was one of many armed groups who said they were fighting to redress injustice in the impoverished Niger Delta, where five decades of oil extraction had polluted the land and water, and enriched corrupt politicians.

Okah 'organised' wave of attacks

But crime and militancy were intertwined in the delta and such groups made big profits from kidnappings for ransom, from a lucrative trade in stolen oil or from providing thugs-for-hire to politicians who used them to steal elections.

Okah was one of the main rebel leaders who organised a wave of attacks on oil production facilities and kidnappings of oil workers in early 2006 that shut down about a fifth of Nigerian output, contributing to the rise in global oil prices.

Since Yar'Adua took power in May last year, his government had promised a 15-year development strategy to address the root causes of the violence in the delta and had tried to negotiate a peace deal with various groups.

Okah's faction was receptive at first and declared a temporary cease-fire, but since he was arrested in Angola in September his loyalists resumed attacks, blowing up pipelines and ships and making frequent threats.

Other militant leaders, however, recently announced they were returning to the talks after a hiatus lasting a few weeks.

- Reuters