LAGOS, Dec 16: Uncertainty on Tuesday surrounded who was responsible for the disappearance of the UN envoy to Niger that has embarrassed the authorities in Niamey.

On its website, the Tuareg rebel Restoration Forces Front (FFR) said it seized Robert Fowler, 64, a veteran Canadian diplomat who is UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s pointman in Niger, along with three others.

But shortly afterwards, FFR chief Mohamed Awtchiki Kriska said that “the FFR formally denies being implicated in the disappearance” of Fowler and a second Canadian diplomat.

The website message — signed by FFR “war commissioner” Rhissa Ag Boula, a Tuareg rebel leader from the 1990s now living in exile — said Fowler “is in good health and will soon be transferred to a safe place and handed over to other colleagues who will look after him.”

It was Rhissa Ag Boula who in January announced in a French weekly that he was launching a “war” over Niger’s uranium riches. Niger is the world’s third uranium producer, after Canada and Australia.

Fowler, 64, and compatriot and fellow UN official Louis Guay disappeared late Sunday about 40 kilometres from the Niger capital, Niamey.

Niger’s government on Monday said Fowler and two other people, including a driver, travelling in a UN Development Programme vehicle had gone missing.

The Canadian government could only confirm that Fowler and his aide Guay had been reported missing in Niger.

Fowler was Canada’s ambassador to UN headquarters in New York from 1995 to 2000, when he began a six-year site as Ottawa’s ambassador to Rome.

More recently, he acted as envoy to Africa for Canada’s last three leaders, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He was appointed the UN special envoy to landlocked Niger — one of the world’s poorest countries — in July.

During 38 years of public service, he was also deputy minister of Canada’s department of national defence, and advised three prime ministers, including Pierre Trudeau, on foreign policy.

“The situation worries me a lot,” Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said. “We will do everything we can to resolve the situation well.” The FFR, which came into view in May this year, is an offshoot of the Tuareg rebel group Movement of Niger People for Justice (MNJ).

The MNJ said it was aware of Fowler’s “disappearance”, but expressed suprise at the kidnap claims on the FFR website.

Fowler’s disappearance is embarrassing for the Niger government, which dismisses the rebels operating in the vast deserts of the north of the country as “bandits” and “drug traffickers”.

The north of Niger, off limits to foreign journalists, has for almost two years been the scene of sporadic fighting between the army and the rebels,

Communication Minister Mohamed Ben Omar, spokesman for the Niger government, said that the searches under way for Fowler and Guay have so far been fruitless.

In contrast to the MNJ, which has over the past two years launched numerous attacks against Niger army positions in the north, the FFR has kept a very low profile.

Traditionally, Tuareg groups have accused the authorities of shutting them out from uranium jobs and revenue.

French group Areva, which for decades had a monopoly on Niger’s uranium, now faces competition after Niamey began handing out permits to mining companies from other countries, notably Canada and China.—AFP