China calls for release of five kidnapped telecommunication workers in Nigeria

China yesterday called for the release of five Chinese telecommunications workers abducted in southern Nigeria's troubled oil-producing region, calling it a matter of the "highest importance."

The five workers were taken hostage on Friday by unidentified gunmen in the Niger river delta region, an area notorious for kidnappings by separatists seeking a cut of the area's oil wealth.

"China's leaders attach the highest importance to this," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Jianchao (劉建超) ) said in a statement released yesterday.

"President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) have ordered the foreign ministry and China's embassy in Nigeria to find a way to ensure the lives and safety of the abductees and give all their efforts to save them," the spokesman said.

Liu said relevant Chinese officials were "actively cooperating" with their Nigerian counterparts in an effort to secure the release of the workers.

China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported yesterday that the country's ambassador to Nigeria had lodged a formal complaint over the inciden. Nigerian authorities responded with a vow to free the hostages, Xinhua said.

"All will be done to free the hostages as soon as possible," Xinhua quoted the Nigerian foreign ministry's Secretary Hakeem Baba-Ahmed as saying.

"We want to assure other nationals that Nigeria is still a good nation for the conduct of business and will never compromise law and order," Hakeem told Xinhua.

Media reports quoted Chinese Ambassador Xu Jianguo (徐建國) as saying the abductees were employees of Sichuan Telecommunications Co.

More than 60 foreigners, mostly oil workers, were kidnapped last year by armed separatists in the delta region, who demand that a greater share of the region's oil revenue be given to its ethnic Ijaw people.