Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan pledged on Thursday to find more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Islamist rebels, saying their rescue would mark "the beginning of the end of terrorism" in the country.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) being hosted in the capital Abuja, Jonathan also thanked foreign nations including the United States, Britain, France and China for their support in trying to rescue the girls, who were kidnapped from a secondary school on April 14.
He thanked delegates for coming despite the terrorist threat facing Nigeria.
This comes after U.S. President Barack Obama issued a somber warning on Wednesday that the kidnapping of Nigerian girls and sectarian conflicts worldwide are a sign that "we have not extinguished man's darkest impulses."
Obama accepted a humanitarian award from director Steven Spielberg at the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation, a Holocaust museum founded by Spielberg after he made the film "Schindler's List."
Obama spoke about a variety of global conflicts including Ukraine, Syria, and the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian girls by the Boko Haram Islamist militant group.
"We only need to look at today's headlines: The devastation of Syria, the murders and kidnappings in Nigeria, the sectarian conflicts, the tribal conflicts to see that we have not yet extinguished man's darkest impulses," Obama said.
President Barack Obama's administration has announced plans to establish a "coordination cell" of experts in Nigeria to bolster efforts to find the girls, who Boko Haram has threatened to sell into slavery.
The degree of U.S. assistance is still being defined but the Pentagon said that the cell at the U.S. embassy in Abuja would include fewer than 10 military personnel.
"Their mission there is simply to assess and advise. These personnel will be experts in areas to include communications, logistics, intelligence," said the spokesman, Army Colonel Steve Warren.
"At this time, we are not considering a U.S. operation to help rescue the girls," Warren said.
The U.S. State Department said the team would provide "military, law enforcement and information sharing assistance."
Similarly, a spokesman for the British Prime Minister declared that Britain will send a team of governmental advisers to Nigeria, within the framework of the efforts exerted in order to release the schoolgirls.
The spokesman said that the team will head for Nigeria “as soon as possible,” but did not mention the status of the members, and whether it will include military personnel.
He added that the British crew will work alongside the forces sent by US president Barack Obama and tasked with maintaining security.
France also said it was boosting intelligence ties with Nigeria and sending security service agents there to tackle Boko Haram. Around 10 experts from the external DGSE intelligence service with satellite surveillance knowledge would first be sent to join United States and British teams, official sources said.
Demanding an Islamic state, Boko Haram has been fighting in the northeast for five years but attracted renewed global attention last month with the abduction of girls taking exams in the village of Chibok in Borno state.
Police said on Wednesday that at least 125 people were killed in the latest large-scale attack after gunmen rampaged through a town in the northeast.
REUTERS
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