EXCLUSIVE-Niger rebels want greater stake in uranium, oil

By Nick Tattersall

DAKAR, June 27 (Reuters) - Nomadic rebels who have launched a string of attacks in northern Niger's Sahara desert said on Wednesday they wanted greater control over uranium and oil reserves being sold off to Chinese and other foreign firms.

The former French colony's desert north has long been a hotbed of dissent, largely beyond government control, full of disillusioned, unemployed youths and awash with arms left over from an uprising by Tuareg, Arab and Toubou nomads in the 1990s.

But the region is also rich in uranium. Niger's government, more than 1,000 km (620 miles) away in the capital, is hoping to cash in on rising world demand, particularly from China, by granting dozens of new exploration permits.

"The government wants to install China in the north of Niger. We are against that," Seydou Kaocen Maiga, spokesman for the rebel Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ), told Reuters.

"What we demand is that local people in the region where these mineral resources are being exploited, particularly uranium, are involved in managing those resources," he said in a telephone interview from Paris.

The MNJ has carried out a series of raids on military targets in the northern region around Agadez in recent months. Last week, it killed 15 soldiers and took dozens hostage during a raid on a remote army outpost, its boldest strike yet.

Maiga said the latest attacks had targeted Niger's armed forces in reprisal for their killing of civilians during a heavy-handed security crackdown. But he said the campaign of violence would not directly target foreign workers.

"Our strategy is not to take hostages. ... If we had wanted to put them in danger we'd already have done so," Maiga said.

"But we condemn what's being done: giving extraction, exploitation and exploration permits to China. ... They're not welcome because they don't work with locals, they don't employ locals, and they respect the environment even less."

ARMS AND DRUG TRAFFICKING

Despite mineral riches including iron ore, silver, platinum and titanium, Niger is one of the poorest states on earth. Many outside Niamey, a hotchpotch of concrete towers built during the last uranium boom, live in mud huts on the edge of the Sahara.

Sandwiched between oil majors Nigeria, Algeria and Libya, it has proven reserves of some 300 million barrels of oil but needs to find more to become an economically viable producer.

Most of the nomadic groups which staged an uprising in the 1990s accepted peace deals in 1995. But the MNJ says the government has not lived up to its promises, leaving the north economically marginalised and rife with insecurity.

President Mamadou Tandja's government refuses to recognise the MNJ, saying the recent attacks have nothing to do with the insurgency of the 1990s and dismissing them as acts of banditry carried out by drug traffickers and common criminals.

U.S. military experts have been training Niger's army, along with those of other nations around northwest Africa, to deal with banditry and terrorism in recent years as part of Washington's Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership.

Diplomats acknowledge that Tuareg and other nomadic groups working the Sahara's generations-old trading routes have the best intelligence in the desert. But they struggle to tap in to it because the groups are considered outlaws by the government.

"We have proof there are arms traffickers, there are drugs traffickers in this region," Maiga said.

"Last time, we caught a convoy with 600 kg of heroin and heavy weapons. But nobody reacted. We even called organisations fighting drug trafficking ... but nobody came to check because they say the MNJ is not recognised by the government."

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