NIAMEY, Niger - The president of Niger said Tuesday that a Canadian diplomat who went missing last month along with his assistant and their driver was kidnapped by rebels.
"All of our investigations lead us to believe that he was taken hostage by this terrorist group and their accomplices," President Mamadou Tandja told a gathering of diplomats at a ceremony marking the new year in the capital of the West African country.
His statement marked the first time authorities in Niger have publicly commented on the disappearance of Robert Fowler.
Fowler, 64, was on assignment as the United Nations' special envoy to Niger when he and his assistant, fellow Canadian diplomat Louis Guay, disappeared on Dec. 14.
Their car was found abandoned about 50 kilometres northeast of Niamey, Niger's capital.
"I have one thought that I would like to send out to the special envoy of the UN secretary general and his colleague ... that they quickly regain their freedom," Tandja said.
Fowler was a senior adviser to several prime ministers, starting with Pierre Trudeau, and played a leading role in thwarting the trade of so-called blood diamonds in the 1990s.
Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said last week in Ottawa that "all resources" at the government's disposal, including the RCMP and the military, are being brought to bear in the search for Fowler, Guay and their driver.
The Front For Forces of Redress, a Tuareg rebel group, claimed responsibility for Fowler's kidnapping in a statement posted on their website. But the group retracted the claim a few days later, claiming their website had been sabotaged.
The Tuareg nomads inhabit the Sahara Desert, part of which cuts across Niger's barren north. For decades, the nomadic minority have been at odds with the country's darker-skinned majority, who control its government and its resources, including the uranium deposits located in Tuareg territory.
The Tuaregs took up arms against the government in the 1990s and signed a peace deal in 1995, promised a degree of autonomy, development funds for the north, and integration of the Tuareg minority into the country's armed forces and government. But hostilities resumed last year as Tandja's government began actively drilling for uranium in the northern desert.
Since the rebirth of the conflict, Tandja has refused to refer to the rebels as such. He calls them "armed bandits" and "drug traffickers" in a kind of government code meant to reduce their credibility.
"I'll say it again - these armed bandits are nothing other than a terrorist group implicated in drug, arms and human trafficking," he told the diplomats.
With files from The Canadian Press
