Niger’s main Tuareg rebel group set for talks

ReliefWeb - 06/07/09
Niger’s main Tuareg rebel group set for talks
mardi 7 juillet 2009

NIAMEY, July 6, 2009 (AFP) - Leaders of Niger’s main Tuareg rebel Movement of Nigeriens for Justice (MNJ) have arrived in Niamey for peace talks with the government, an interior ministry official said Monday.

The delegation arrived Sunday from Libya and will "have discussions about the possible disarming of their fighters" and barracks for the rebels if a deal is reached, said the official, who asked not to be named.

But MNJ president Agaly Alambo was not part of the delegation.

The MNJ emerged in 2007 in the uranium-rich north of the otherwise deeply poor west African country on the southern edge of the Sahara, part of the Sahel territory that is home to Tuaregs in several countries.

The first meeting between Niger’s Tuaregs and President Mamadou Tandja took place on May 3.

Niger’s leader, who had long dismissed the rebels as no more than armed bandits, eventually proposed an amnesty for those Tuaregs who laid down their arms. But divisions within the MNJ have created two splinter groups, which may complicate a peace process.

Offically, only one of these splinter groups, the Nigerian Patriotic Front (FPN), has agreed to its forces accepting barracks on a government base in the north.

The MNJ and the breakaway Front of Forces for a Recovery (FFR), led by former tourism minister Rhissa Ag Boula, are demanding a total amnesty for all their forces and the release of prisoners.

They also want an end to the state of emergency Tandja placed on northern Niger in 2007, to give the army a free hand.

Tandja’s amnesty offer coincided with a vital deal with French mining giant Areva to open up an enormous new uranium mine at Imouraren in northern Niger, on the traditional territory of the Tuareg desert nomads.

Uranium is the only substantial source of foreign exchange for the landlocked nation.

For a definitive peace, Niger’s Tuaregs want posts in the army and in the paramilitary police, as well as a stake in the uranium mining that takes place on their lands.

Observers have questioned how far Tandja’s amnesty offer goes. FFR warlord Ag Boula has been sentenced to death in his absence having been convicted of the murder of a ruling party activist. He currently lives in exile in France.