Nigerian militants halt attacks in oil region

[July 15, 2009]  ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) -- Nigeria's main militant group called a 60-day cease-fire Wednesday, halting its campaign of vandalizing oil installations and kidnapping foreigners after the government released an ailing rebel leader.

The government freed Henry Okah on Monday -- meeting a rebel demand -- just hours after the main rebel group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, set fire to an oil depot and loading tankers in Lagos, Nigeria's economic powerhouse.

Three naval officers and two oil workers were killed in that attack, the group's first outside the Delta region, officials said.

The militants called Okah's release "a step towards genuine peace and prosperity if Nigeria is open to frank talks and deals sincerely with the root issues once and for all."

The militants said they hope the cease-fire would create an "enabling environment" for talks with the government on their demands, including investing more oil revenues in the southern region, which remains poverty-stricken and polluted more than 50 years after oil first was pumped in the West African nation.

Since 2006, the rebels have stepped up attacks on oil installations and kidnapped more than 200 foreign oil workers for ransom in an effort to press their demands. The attacks have trimmed Nigeria's daily oil output by about 25 percent off pre-2006 heights, with the country producing about 1.6 million barrels per day now.

Okah is the first militant released under a 60-day amnesty announced last month for militants willing to lay down their arms. At the time, the militants rejected the offer, saying an amnesty should be aimed at criminals, not "freedom fighters."

Okah, who the rebels said has a kidney ailment, had been in custody since his September 2007 arrest in Angola on Nigerian charges of treason and gunrunning. Those charges have now been dropped, according to his lawyer Femi Falana.

The military said Wednesday it was pleased the rebels had called off their attacks.

"We welcome whoever embraces peace," Col. Rabe Musa, spokesman for the Joint Task Force in the Niger Delta, told The Associated Press. "Our mandate is for sustenance of peace in the region."

The militants say their impoverished region has not benefited from five decades of oil production, and are agitating for more federally held oil funds to be sent to the south. They also want the government to withdraw troops from the area, and to help people return to homes they either fled amid the violence or were forced to leave.

The government has acknowledged the grievances of many in the Niger Delta, but denounces the militants as criminals who use their struggle as a cover to make money by stealing crude oil from Nigeria's wells and pipelines and selling it overseas.

Corrupt government officials, however, also siphon off and sell oil, and many state-level politicians are linked to the militants and other armed gangs.

In a statement Wednesday, militants said they were assembling a group of elders to present their demands to the government.

Okah said upon his release he was unsure what he could do to help end the conflict.

"I have to see people, speak with people," Okah told reporters. "I am just one man; there are millions in the Niger Delta."

Last month, in another apparent concession to the militants, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to a $15.5 million settlement to end a lawsuit alleging the oil giant was complicit in the 1995 executions of six people, including activist poet Ken Saro-Wiwa, by Nigeria's former military regime.

Shell, which continues to operate in Nigeria, said it settled the lawsuit in hopes of aiding the "process of reconciliation." But Europe's largest oil company acknowledged no wrongdoing.

[Associated Press; By BASHIR ADIGUN]

Associated Press writer Ufford Wilson in Port Harcourt contributed to this report.

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