ALGIERS, 4 June 2004 — The speaker of Algeria’s Parliament, Karim Younes, yesterday announced his resignation in a statement read out to the assembly, the official APS news agency said.
Younes, who had supported Ali Benflis, the key rival to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika before the latter was returned to power in an election two months ago, said that he had taken his decision on April 10, two days after the poll.
“I thought it right not to make this decision public for many reasons, particularly to avoid hindering the proper functioning of the institutions by allowing the government to present its policy program,” Younes told the Popular National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.
He added that he wanted to “safeguard Parliament from tumult and unnecessary splits that could endanger its credibility”, referring to deep divisions which have developed in the past year within the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN).
Bouteflika won almost 85 percent of votes cast in the April election, according to the official result, while former Prime Minister Benflis garnered scarcely eight percent.
After the election, Benflis resigned from his post as secretary-general of the FLN but ruled out the withdrawal of members of the former sole ruling party who had supported his candidacy.
The leadership and policy crisis within the FLN is the most serious since bloody food riots in 1988 brought an end to the unchallenged sway it had held over the north African country since independence from France in 1962.
The FLN currently has 203 of the 389 seats in the lower house of parliament. Benflis, tipped to win the April presidential election by many newspapers and Algerian political observers, rejected the outcome of the vote, saying it was based on massive fraud.
Meanwhile, a group of suspected terrorists killed at least 10 Algerian soldiers and injured 42 in an attack on a military convoy near the resort town of Beni Ksila, about 260 kilometers east of the capital Algiers, local media reported yesterday.
According to press reports more than 20 of the injured were hospitalized in critical condition. The attack came as the convoy of 150 soldiers entered the sea resort after a four-day search for Islamic terrorists in the region.
A Chadian rebel group yesterday called on Algeria to pick up some 15 members of an Algerian militant group it was holding. The Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad (MDJT) believe they captured Algerian Amari Saifi, known as El-Para and the second in command of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), in March along with more than a dozen followers.
El-Para, whose armed movement has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for kidnapping 32 European tourists, including several German nationals, in the Sahara desert last year. Germany has issued a warrant for his arrest.
“We have informed Algeria but no one has come yet to pick them up,” said Abubakar Rajab, a French-based MDJT spokesman.
“It seems to be a technical problem because the Algerians do not want to enter Chadian territory to collect them. But we believe a quick solution can still be found,” he said.
US military officials and diplomats say they are concerned that El-Para and his followers fighting for an Islamic state are looking to recruit in the region south of the Sahara and re-arm, flush with cash after reportedly being paid five million euros for the hostages’ release.
There are no independent confirmation of the MDJT claims of holding the GSPC members, but diplomats and military officials said they were credible following clashes in early March between the Chadian army and the GSPC in which 43 militants were killed.
