21 Jan 2006 10:32:30 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Daniel Flynn

The militant group, whose month-long campaign of violence has driven oil prices to their highest level since September, is demanding the release of two Ijaw leaders, compensation for pollution and more local control over the delta's oil wealth.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, which has crippled one tenth of Nigeria's oil production, has warned that U.S. hostage Patrick Landry is gravely ill and threatened to kill British, Honduran and Bulgarian captives if he dies.

Many fear that would lead to a dramatic worsening of the delta's long-running conflict. Ijaw elder statesmen have appealed to the little-known group to release the captives, seized 10 days ago from a Royal Dutch Shell oilfield.

"We are doing everything possible behind the scenes to ensure the speedy release of the hostages," said Kimse Okoko, president of the Ijaw National Congress.

Oil unions threatened to withdraw from Nigeria's delta if security worsened on Friday following a vow by the militants to continue with their campaign of bombings and sabotage which has killed dozens of people and injured many more.

One senior oil industry figure said President Olusegun Obasanjo was unlikely to heed demands for the release of militant leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and former Bayelsa state governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha.

Nigeria's only Ijaw governor, Alamieyeseigha was impeached last month for money-laundering after escaping arrest in Britain and now faces criminal charges. Asari, who led a bloody militant rebellion in the delta in 2004, is on trial for treason.

"If the government does not take a hard line this whole thing could happen again in six months," said the source. "And if anything happens to one of the hostages, then it changes the entire game."

NOT ADDRESSING DEMANDS

Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Edmund Daukoru, part of a task force named by Obasanjo, said on Friday the government had only preliminary contact with the militants.

"We are not addressing their demands as of now. We have just made a first contact," he told journalists in the delta town of Yenagoa. "We are hopeful for the early release of the hostages."

The government committee was due to meet again on Saturday to discuss strategy. A troika of three Ijaw elder statesmen, including Okoko, have offered to act as mediators, sources said.

Army officials in the area have said troops are on high alert but are not trying to track down the hostages as the government pursues negotiations.

Many analysts believe tensions in the delta, which produces all Nigeria's oil, will rise ahead of national elections in 2007. An Ijaw uprising before the 2003 elections cut Nigerian output by 40 percent.

The four captive workers have complained to Reuters by telephone of diarrhoea and fatigue from constant movement in the humid, mosquito-plagued delta in southern Nigeria.

"We are in bad shape, we really are," Landry, who suffers high blood pressure, said on Thursday. "Meet these people's demand. We are not military: we came here to work."

So far, Shell is the only oil major to say it has suffered attacks. It has cut its production by 210,000 barrels a day and pulled out 500 staff. Hundreds of contractors have also fled.

Moving by motorboat in the maze of creeks in the delta, the kidnappers have said that if Shell paid the $1.5 billion they say it owes delta villages for years of pollution, they would focus on other oil companies.

France's Total and Italy's Agip, a unit of ENI have both denied militant claims they were attacked.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ashby in Lagos)