ALGIERS, 13 April 2004 — The banned Algerian fundamentalist group, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), yesterday congratulated President Abdelaziz Bouteflika for his resounding election win last week and urged him to see through his national reconciliation program. “We are waiting to see if his re-election will lift all the obstacles in the way of frankly implementing the reconciliation program,” the FIS said in a statement released here.
The FIS, which wants to create an Islamic state in Algeria, was banned in 1992 when the group was on the verge of winning legislative elections. Between 100,000 and 200,000 people are estimated to have died in the subsequent violence between extremists and government forces. Earlier in the day, Rabah Kebir, a spokesman for the group in exile, congratulated Bouteflika for his landslide victory. Kebir, who lives in Germany, had called on Algerians before last Thursday’s elections to vote for Bouteflika.
