News, March 2004, www.aljazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
|
|
|
US Denies It Has Bases in Algeria
Agence France Presse, Arab News
ALGIERS, 5 March 2004 — The United States does not have any military bases in Algeria but is actively working with the north African country to fight terrorism, a statement by the US Embassy in Algiers said yesterday.
“The United States has not set up or intend to install any military bases in Algeria. Reports in the press to this end are baseless,” said the statement.
“The fight against terrorism is a key factor in Algerian-American cooperation,” it said.
“Algeria’s contribution to the war against terrorism has been remarkable,” it said.
“We also cooperate with other countries in the region as part of the pan-Sahel initiative, which aims to reinforce the capability of regional governments to fight terrorism.”
Military cooperation between the United States and Algeria “is in the process of being broadened,” said the statement, adding that the US had in 2003 stepped up the military assistance provided to the north African country.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns said during a visit to Algeria in October last year that Washington had increased military assistance to Algeria, where a civil war driven by extremist groups has claimed some 150,000 lives since 1992.
Burns said at the time that the US was helping to train military officers and supply Algeria’s armed forces with equipment.
Last year, the US spent $700,000 providing military assistance to the north African country, he said.
The embassy statement also said the US was concerned by reports that said the largest extremist group in Algeria, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (SGPC), had a website hosted by a US server.
“We are looking into that,” said the statement, recalling that Washington considers the SGPC a “foreign terrorist organization” and has linked the group to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.
The SGPC, which confirmed in a statement issued in September that it was allied to Al-Qaeda, last year kidnapped 32 European tourists in Algeria’s southern Sahara, some of whom it held hostage for six months.
A first group of hostages was released in May, when the Algerian Army raided the kidnappers’ hideout near the border with Libya, but a second group was made to trek across the desert into Mali, and was only released in August last year, allegedly after a hefty ransom was paid to the SGPC.
One hostage, a German mother of two, died in captivity.
In October last year, Algeria’s ambassador to Mali told an international meeting on terrorism in Bamako organized by the African Center for Strategic Studies (CESA), one of three regional centers of the US National Defense University, that the “terrorists who kidnapped the Europeans are still in Mali” and were probably recruiting more fighters and trafficking in arms.
 |
| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
 |
| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
 |