Niger says believes "terrorists" holding U.N. envoy

By Abdoulaye Massalatchi

NIAMEY, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Niger President Mamadou Tandja said on Tuesday investigations indicated "terrorists" had kidnapped a Canadian U.N. envoy and his aide who went missing in the West African state a month ago.

A senior Niger intelligence official said this included the possibility that "armed Islamist groups" might be holding envoy Robert Fowler and his aide Louis Guay, whose empty vehicle was found abandoned outside Niger's capital Niamey on Dec 14.

Their local driver was also missing, in what Niger authorities are treating as a kidnap case.

"All the investigations carried out lead us to believe that they are hostages of terrorist groups," Tandja said in a meeting with the diplomatic corps in Niamey.

It was the president's first public statement on the disappearance of Fowler, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations who was serving as special U.N. envoy to Niger.

Tandja made clear he believed the possible suspects in the kidnapping included Tuareg rebels who for nearly two years have fought an insurgency mostly in the uranium-producing desert north of this former French colony in Africa's Sahel.

Using the term his government habitually employs to describe the Tuareg insurgents, Tandja told the ambassadors "these armed bandits are nothing more than terrorist groups mixed up in the trafficking of drugs, arms and human beings".

The main Tuareg rebel group, the Niger Justice Movement (MNJ), has denied any role in the kidnapping and suggested it may have been carried out by government security agencies with the aim of discrediting the rebels.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said last week that Canada had not received a ransom demand for the diplomats.

A senior official from Niger's intelligence services told Reuters investigators from both countries were following all possible leads "including the possibility that they have been seized to be delivered as hostages to armed Islamist groups."

He did not elaborate, but the North Africa branch of al Qaeda has claimed a series of attacks in the region in recent years, including the kidnapping last year of two Austrian tourists abducted in Tunisia who were later freed in Mali.

"We hope we can find them," the Niger intelligence officer said, asking not to be named. Two days after Fowler and Guay disappeared following a visit to a gold mine operated by a Canadian-based company, a rebel Tuareg splinter faction initially claimed on its website that it had abducted them, but it later retracted the claim.

Canada's government has been in contact with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about the abduction. Fowler, 64, took up his post as special envoy to Niger in July 2008. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: africa.reuters.com/) (Writing by Pascal Fletcher)