Critics denounce EU’s record of inaction in Algerian crisis

Date: 29/05/1997

AS ALGERIA prepares to go to the polls early next month, pressure groups are calling on the EU to take more interest in the country's endangered democracy.

Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia and his supporters will be competing with 39 parties and over 7,500 candidates for 380 seats, but will not be confronted by the popular but outlawed Islamic Front (FIS).

While international election observers will be present and few expect any serious tampering, the elections may prove yet another goad to the increasingly violent and excluded factions terrorising the country.

Scarcely a week goes by without news of another atrocity in the Maghreb giant and yet, claim critics, the Union has not done nearly enough to support peace and conciliation.

“The EU-Mediterranean Partnership cannot continue to ignore the crisis in Algeria,” warned Paul Eavis, executive director of the research group Saferworld.

“A country in which 100,000 lives have been lost in conflict since 1992, and in which two out of three young people are unemployed, completely undermines the credibility of the partnership's aim to spread prosperity, peace and stability in North Africa.”

Saferworld is calling on the Union to mediate an end to the Algerian conflict, to suspend negotiations on an association agreement until the government lifts its ban on the FIS, to impose an arms embargo on the country and to focus more funding upon civil society and decentralised programmes.

European Commission sources reply that there is already a huge amount of EU support for democracy in Algeria, which benefits from a 9 million ecu-a-year programme for the whole region, and a range of social support mechanisms under the 2-billion-ecu Euro-Mediterranean funding package.

They add that as Europe is Algeria's partner, it cannot force political mediation down the country's throat if it does not want it (which it does not).

Finally, Commission experts insist that suspending negotiations on the association agreement would be counter-productive, as the accord itself contains a strong commitment to human rights. “Once the agreement is in force, then we will have something to say,” said one official.

Paul Rich, from the University of Luton, and Sarah Joseph, from Saferworld, reply in a new report that for all its fine words, Europe's strategy is simply not working. “The policy is ill-equipped to deal with a situation such as Algeria, where conflict has already broken out,” they argue.

The authors fear Algeria could split into factions, become a military Islamic alliance or witness even more authoritarian rule if the West continues to prop up General Liamine Zeroual's regime.

But powerful European interests in Algeria's huge hydrocarbon reserves (which provide 20&percent; of the continent's gas needs) and arms market make it difficult to get agreement on an objective policy towards the country.