Nigeria's government signaled willingness on Tuesday to negotiate with Islamist militants holding more than 200 schoolgirls, a month after a mass kidnap that has provoked global outrage, according to the Associated Press.
"The window of negotiation is still open," said Minister of Special Duties Tanimu Turaki, head of an amnesty committee set up by President Goodluck Jonathan last year and charged with talking to the Boko Haram militants behind a five-year-old insurgency, the AP reported.
Turaki declined to comment on possible talks over the kidnapping itself, but senior officials say the government is exploring options and there has been no commitment to negotiations for the release of the girls, according to the AP.
Boko Haram has killed thousands of people since 2009 and destabilized parts of northeast Nigeria, the country with Africa's largest population and biggest economy, the AP reported.
The abductions have triggered a worldwide social media campaign under the Twitter hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, and prompted the United States, Britain, France and Israel to offer help or send experts to Nigeria, according to the AP.
Currently, U.S. surveillance aircraft were flying over remote areas of the northeast searching for traces of where the girls may be kept hidden, the AP reported.
The amnesty committee's initial six-month mandate expired without holding direct talks with the rebels, though it has spoken to them through proxies, according to senior government officials, according to the AP. It has since been replaced by a standing committee empowered to conduct talks.
Turaki was speaking a day after Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau posted a video offering to release the girls in exchange for prisoners held by the government, the AP reported.
In the video, more than 110 girls can be seen sitting on the ground in a rural location, according to the AP.
The girls are mostly Christian, but Shekau described them as 'infidels' and they were wearing full Islamic veils while singing and chanting Muslim prayers, the AP reported. It was not clear when it was filmed or whether Shekau, who sat in front of a green backdrop holding an AK-47 during part of the video, was in the same location as the girls.
The girls shown are only part of the 276 abducted on April 14 from a secondary school in the northeastern village of Chibok, in a sparsely populated region near the borders with Cameroon, Niger and Chad, according to the AP. Some escaped, but about 200 are still missing, with the group initially threatening to sell them into slavery.
