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09/26/2004:

"Nigerian Rebels to Widen Conflict, Target Agip"

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigerian rebels battling troops in Africa's top oil exporter declared on Sunday they would extend their uprising across the whole of the country's oil-producing southern delta.

A rebel leader told Reuters the conflict, currently focused in the eastern part of the delta, was to force political reforms or gain sovereignty for the impoverished region, adding that his militia would attack Italian oil installations and personnel.

Mujahid Dokubo-Asari accused the Italian oil company Agip, a unit of ENI, of lending helicopters to the military to spy on rebel positions. The company denied it.

Companies fear a repeat of last year's uprising by members of the Ijaw tribe, which forced them temporarily to shut 40 percent of the country's 2.5 million barrel per day output.

Oil production has not yet been affected by the latest surge in violence, but multinational Royal Dutch/Shell evacuated 235 staff from two oilfields on Thursday.

``We have decided to declare Operation Locust Feast which will cover the whole Niger delta. It is going to be an all-out war against the Nigerian state. Now the whole Ijaw nation will be fighting against the Nigerian state,'' Asari told Reuters by satellite phone.

About half of Nigerian oil production comes from the eastern side of the delta, a vast area of creeks and mangrove swamps, while the other half comes from the west, also inhabited predominantly by Ijaws and scene of last year's rebellion.

...``We were forced into Nigeria by the British colonialists. We are not Nigerians -- there is no such nation as Nigeria,'' Asari said. ``Until there is a Sovereign National Conference to decide these issues, we have no choice but to fight until sovereignty is in our hands.''

Asari says he is fighting to improve the lot of the Niger delta people, most of whom live in abject poverty despite having all the nation's oil reserves. The government calls him a gangster fighting for control of smuggling routes used by oil thieves.

Full Article: Reuters