ARABIC PRESS REVIEW, WEEK ENDING JANUARY 10, 2003

The spate of New Year killings set the tone for a week’s profoundly gloomy reading. www.algeria-interface.com

Algiers, 10/01/2003 - The first week of the new year has been a grim one in Algeria – 100 violent deaths. Understandably the front pages of the press were profoundly gloomy. El Khabar headlined that the GSPC chief, Hassan Hattab and GIA commander Rachid Abou Tourab had ushered in a year of bloodshed. Echourouk was moved to talk of the “decade of hell”.

The Arabic press refrained from the anti-Bouteflika fury of its French-language counterpart – which Al Quds surveyed. Pessimism was nevertheless the keynote.

Retired general Rachid Ben Yelles produced an implacable analysis of the week’s killing in Al Fadjr. His sentiment was that they were predictable and will continue as long as Bouteflika is in power. Yet he thwarted Bouteflika’s foes by asserting that there was no fundamental differenceof views between Bouteflika and the army chiefs who brought him to power.

The ambush in the north-east Aures mountains which claimed the lives of 50 paratroopers prompted claims that Al Qaeda was the mastermind. Speculation dismissed by Echourouk as political manipulation of the media. Echourouk’s view was that ordinary Algerians were dying because the all-out repressive policy of the government had failed and that the Civil Harmony amnesty policy had stopped half-way. Politicians had not been brave enough and Algerians were dying because politicians were “cowardly, opportunistic and hypocritical”.

Nor did the new year get off to a good start on the diplomatic front. After a council of Foreign Ministers in Algiers designed to revive the moribund Union of Maghreb States (UMA) which left observers sceptical, Algeria crossed the path of the US. It had the impudence to send experts from Sonatrach to Venezuela to lend a helping hand to the oil industry sorely tried by the current strike movement against Hugo Chavez.

Washington, according to El Khabar, summoned Algeria’s US ambassador, Driss El Djazayri, to rap his knuckles. The Algerian government denied the report which threw light on a series of embarrassed denials from Energy Minister, Chakib Khelil, also CEO of state-owned Sonatrach. He sought to justify and minimise the assistance given to Venezuela before issuing a statement that assistance was only being considered.

Nothing has been going right for Chakib Khelil 2003. Using indirect channels, particularly labour confederation UGTA, Prime Minister Ali Benflis, hinted that Khelil’s bill to reform the oil and gas industry would never come before parliament. Weekly El Khabar Hebdo believed that Khelil, widely seen as Bouteflika’s pet minister, had lost out to UGTA president, Abdelmadjid Sidi Said, whom it forecast would be “the man of 2003”.

The 2004 presidential elections continued to cloud the political atmosphere, with the FLN’s politburo having its work cut out to quell initiatives aimed at backing Bouteflika’s candidacy for a second term.