Niger says "rich foreign powers" paying mercenaries

NIAMEY, Aug 19 (Reuters) Niger's government has accused unidentified ''rich foreign powers'' of hiring mercenaries to plant land mines in northern uranium mining areas, where Tuareg nomads have waged a rebellion since February.

The poor, landlocked country on the southern fringe of the Sahara has accused French state-controlled uranium group Areva of backing the revolt and making payments to army deserters who joined the rebels, but muted its criticism after Areva raised the royalty it pays Niger for uranium.

''Niger today has proof that antipersonnel and antitank mines have been placed by foreign mercenaries in the pay of rich foreign powers,'' Iboun Gueye, head of the Niger government's communications unit, said on state television late yesterday.

''This is a strategy used by interest groups who use armed groups to further weaken poor states, and above all to reduce their room for manoeuvre during economic negotiations,'' said Gueye, who is also editor in chief of state television.

Landmines have accounted for several of the 40 or so government troops killed since the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) rebels launched their uprising in February in the northern uranium mining zone around the Saharan town of Agadez.

President Mamadou Tandja's government does not recognise the rebel movement, dismissing them as drug smugglers and bandits, but has accused Areva and neighbouring Libya of supporting them.

Gueye did not identify which foreign powers the government believed had hired mercenaries, but said they were being helped by ''certain Niger officials at a high level''.

The government has also accused some domestic and foreign media of lending support to the rebels through biased reporting of the conflict.

Radio France International resumed FM broadcasts in the country today after a month-long ban imposed by Niger's state media regulator for what it called ''imbalanced and openly partisan treatment of the insecurity in the north''.

Areva began mining uranium in the former French colony 36 years ago, but hopes of a mining-led boom fell flat when world prices for the radioactive metal used to power nuclear reactors plummeted in the 1990s.

But as fears of global warming and ever higher electricity usage have driven up world demand, uranium prices have surged in the past few years.

Tandja's government has awarded dozens of prospecting permits to mining companies from China, Canada, Britain, India and elsewhere, and told Areva this month it was breaking the French company's monopoly on the country's mining sector.

Tandja's mining spokesman said on Saturday the government would start talks in the coming weeks to seek more advantageous terms from foreign uranium miners.

REUTERS RKM PM1826