NIGERIA: Niger Delta militants say they are not negotiating with the government to release 4 kidnapped oil workers; new attack on oil installation

Record ID: 236539

  • Title: NIGERIA: Niger Delta militants say they are not negotiating with the government to release 4 kidnapped oil workers; new attack on oil installation
  • Date: 24th January 2006
  • Summary: (W4) NIGER DELTA (FILE) (REUTERS) AERIAL VIEW AGIP OFFSHORE OIL FLOW STATION FILMED FROM HELICOPTER
  • Embargoed: 8th February 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Nigeria
  • Country: Nigeria
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA8W3CIOCWLP30Q7LF2MAC89MFH
  • Story Text: Niger Delta militants who are holding hostage four oil workers said in an e-mail to Reuters on Monday (January 23, 2006) that they were not currently negotiating with the government of Nigeria over the hostages release. The militants said the hostages were in "relatively good shape", but disassociated themselves from "leaders purporting to be negotiating the release of these hostages" with authorities, quashing hopes of a quick end to the 12-day-old hostage crisis.
    The group insisted that it will not compromise on its demands for the release of two ethnic Ijaw leaders, more local control over oil revenues, and $1.5 billion in pollution compensation to delta villages from Shell. The statement came on the same day that militants attacked another oil installation in the troubled Niger Delta.
    An analyst in Lagos said the government was in a very difficult situation,
    "If you negotiated with the militiants you are exposing yourself to blackmail. If you don't negotiate with them you are taken to be insensitive," economic analyst Bismark Rewane said.
    "In any case the hostages in this case are not Nigerian citizens so we have the responsibility to protect them as long as they operate here. If we don't do anything about it our insurance claims will go up, we already have an image problem as it were," he said.
    But Rewane also warned the situation could easily get worse if the Nigerian government did not take steps to make peace in the region.
    "All I can tell you is that this thing is not going away in a hurry. What you are seeing now is a boiling-over of a much more structured problem still being handelled at the unsophisticated level by the Niger Delta indigents. When it is taken over by the educated and sophisticated younger generation that are much more ruthless in organising their resistance then what you are seeing now is (will be) childs' play," Rewane said.
    The group's campaign of sabotage against pipelines and platforms has already wiped almost a tenth off Nigeria's oil output and helped push world oil prices to four-month highs.
    Oil unions have threatened to leave Nigeria's restive delta, which produces almost all the nation's oil, if the security situation deteriorates.
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