Kidnap crisis leaves few options

President Nicolas Sarkozy has limited options after mustering France's diplomatic and military resources to counter a hostage crisis unleashed by al Qaeda in the poor, vulnerable region of the Sahara.

In the biggest escalation of the threat to French interests in the Sahel area, five Frenchmen and two African expatriates working for the French nuclear giant Areva and engineering firm Vinci at a uranium mine at Arlit, in the desert of Niger, were snatched in a pre-dawn raid on September 16.

Responsibility has been claimed by a shadowy group, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), that has carried out two abductions of Frenchmen in the past year and left a trail of bloodshed in Algeria.

According to security sources in France and reports from Niger and Algeria, the gunmen and their hostages swiftly crossed the border into Mali and have been located in a region called Timetrine.

Sarkozy has deployed France's military in strength, fanning speculation that a rescue bid is in the offing.

Three Breguet Atlantic turboprops crammed with listening devices and cameras and three Transall troop carriers, believed to be carrying French special forces, are among the units reported to be in Niger, backed by Mirage fighter-bombers based in Chad.

But a well-placed French security source said the military option was firmly out, at least for the time being.

Faced with a public clamour to have the hostages back home safe and sound, Sarkozy's best path may be negotiate and pay a ransom if necessary, a practice that dates back to the Lebanon hostage crisis of the 1980s even if it is routinely denied, the source said.

"France has got its back against the wall with this latest hostage-taking. We're in for the long haul on this one," the source said.

AQIM, named Maghreb after the Arabic word for the countries of Northwest Africa, declared its affiliation to al Qaeda in 2006.

After that it stepped up its attacks in the Sahel, a vast but loosely defined region that comprises parts of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Mali, Libya, Morocco and Niger.

AQIM's senior commanders have been identified as veterans from Islamist insurgencies in Algeria and Yemen, but beneath this level, the organisation is ramshackle and feeds on the proceeds of crime, say sources.

The militants are well connected in the clans, businesses and drug smuggling that stretch invisibly across the Sahel in mockery of national borders, said one.

Suspicions are high that they acted with the acquiescence, or even the connivance, of the security force ordered to guard the expatriates in Arlit, said another.

"They know everything that's happening in the area. It would be very difficult to surprise them," the source said. A report in the French media earlier this year said AQIM had built concrete shelters in Mali to shield themselves from spy planes.

On the political front, France wields clout in the Sahel, where it is the former colonial power and the only Western nation with any significant presence there.

Responding to the crisis, the spy chiefs of Algeria, Mauritania, Niger and Mali met on Wednesday in Tamanrasset, Algeria, where they agreed to step up co-ordination and ask Chad, Libya and Morocco to join their group, French media reported.

But goodwill in the region is also tinged with bewilderment and disdain at France's willingness to negotiate with AQIM. Ransom payments "are absolutely condemnable," Algerian President Abdelazis Bouteflika said in a speech to the United Nations summit in New York last week, in clear warning to France. "It constitutes a major funding source for terrorism."

In February this year, AQIM released a French hostage, Pierre Camlatte, seized in Niger three months earlier, in exchange for the release of four Islamists jailed in northern Mali. In April, AQIM kidnapped a 78-year-old French aid worker in Niger, Michel Germaneau. French and Mauritanian troops attacked the gang's suspected hideout in Mali in July, killing seven militants but failing to find Germaneau, whose killing was later announced by AQIM.

France sees AQIM not just as a threat to its citizens but also to its strategic interests.

Niger provides France with 40 per cent of its raw uranium, which is reprocessed in French reactors to power the nuclear plants that meet nearly 75 per cent of the country's electricity needs.

The hostage-taking has already had a dramatic effect on tourism, one of the Sahel's few sources of revenue.

"The Islamist influence is crippling the region," said Maurice Freund, a veteran tour operator who has suspended most excursions to Niger, Mauritania and Algeria.

"New cells are breeding all the time. The big danger is that the region ends up like Somalia."