State TV: Tuareg rebels fighting the Niger government release last hostage

State TV: Tuareg rebels in Niger release hostage

NIAMEY, Niger — Tuareg rebels fighting the government of Niger released their last hostage on Sunday, an interior minister said on state TV.

The state television station broadcast images of Mamane Louali, who was captured in June 2007, being released at the airport in Agadez, a town in the country’s far north and one of the traditional bases of the nomadic Tuaregs.

The Niger Movement for Justice, known by its French abbreviation MNJ, has taken dozens of Nigerien soldiers hostage in their fight against the government of Niger. They accuse the government of marginalizing the Tuareg minority.

There was no immediate confirmation of the hostage release on the MNJ’s Web site. A statement posted on the rebel site April 13 cast doubt on the recent peace negotiations, facilitated by neighboring Libya.

Minister of the Interior Albade Abouba said the hostage released was the last of dozens that the MNJ had captured. He said Louali’s release comes as President Mamadou Tandja, on an official visit to Agadez, agreed for the first time to meet with MNJ representatives.

The rebel group launched an uprising in 2007, claiming the government had failed to come through on promises brokered during an earlier 1995 peace accord with the Tuaregs.

Throughout the two-year conflict, Tandja refused to meet with the MNJ or even to refer to the rebels by name, calling them “drug traffickers” or “armed bandits,” words that became accepted government code for the Tuareg militia.

Besides the MNJ, Abouda said the president will also meet with representatives of other armed Tuareg factions.

For decades, the lighter-skinned nomads have claimed that they have been ignored by Niger’s government, ruled from the southern city of Niamey by darker-skinned Africans. The long-festering conflict took on a new dimension with the exploitation of uranium in the country’s northern desert.

Tandja on Monday is expected to accompany representatives of French energy giant Areva at a ceremony marking the beginning of a new uranium project in Imouraren, not far from Agadez.

Niger currently produces 3,000 tons of uranium, but starting in 2011, the Imouraren site is expected to boost Niger’s uranium production to 5,000 tons per year.