Algeria sets different standards for Libyan recognition

Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci has said at a Sunday 11th September press conference with his Malian counterpart that Algeria will officially recognise Libya's new rulers once the former rebels form a new government representative of all Libyans. His comments have already received considerable sarcastic comments because Algeria is the one North African country doing its best to hold out against a 'representative government'.

Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC) has plentiful evidence that Algeria gave strong support to the Qadhafi regime during the six months before he was overthrown. It is also currently sheltering several members of his family, almost certainly in contravention of the UN travel ban; still providing support to Qadhafi loyalists; and doing almost everything in its power to destabilise the NTC by giving as much publicity as it can to alleged feuds between its Islamist and secularist members.

Algeria's two-faced stance is beginning to irritate the NTC's Western backers, namely the US, France and UK. France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppé made a very pointed comment this week when he said that “Algeria's position is not clear”. If Algeria continues to make trouble for the NTC, it is conceivable that the US might begin seriously to reconsider its hitherto strong support of the Algerian regime.

Algeria is the only Arab state to hold out on recognition of the NTC and it has been reluctant to engage with Libya's new rulers. Medelci did say, however, that there had been direct contacts between the two countries in the last two weeks and that a dialogue was developing, even though Algiers does not recognise the NTC as the legitimate authority in Tripoli.

Algeria angered the NTC by giving refuge to members of Qadhafi's family; and the question of whether Aisha Qadhafi did actually give birth to a baby, as Algeria claimed and used as its reason for breaching the UN travel ban, is still unresolved. In fact, as we have reported over the last two weeks, the only acceptable proof that Algeria is telling the truth over Aisha's second birth in eight months would be through irrefutable DNA evidence.

There are also doubts as to whether Algeria has, in fact, closed its southern frontiers to Qadhafi loyalists fleeing Libya and possibly cutting across the south-east corner of Algeria into Niger, as it has publicly stated.

For more news and expert analysis about Algeria, please see Algeria Focus and Algeria Politics & Security.

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

© 2011 Menas Associates

Libya Contact Group meets in Turkey

The Libya Contact Group is meeting in Turkey today to discuss the situation in Libya. The group of 15 delegates includes, the ministers of foreign affairs of the UK, Italy and France, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, NATO representatives and Arab diplomats.

France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppé has said Paris has had contact with Libyan officials discussing the prospects of a prospects of a political solution based on contacts with Colonel Mu'ammar Qadhafi.

The meeting is expected to revolve around key issues pertaining to the on-going political deadlock in Libya, and the measures necessary to oust Qadhafi. The delegation will also look at a progress report on the Libyan opposition's plans for progress to democracy. Representatives of the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council are expected, but invitations to China and Russia were both declined.

Libya remains divided with the rebels holding eastern parts of the country and pockets in the west, while Qadhafi remains entrenched in the capital Tripoli, despite a NATO bombing campaign of more than 6,000 sorties against regime forces.

Sources: BBC News, Reuters, Bloomberg

For more news and expert analysis about Libya, please see Libya Focus and Libya Politics & Security.

Foreign officials visit Algeria

The two main and related stories which have dominated this week's news have been the visits to Algeria of France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and the visit of a US 'military-political' delegation led by Mark Adams, a senior adviser with the US State Department's Bureau of Political and Military Affairs. Juppé's visit was the first visit of a French foreign minister to Algeria since Bernard Kouchner visited in May 2008.

Both visits - that of the French and the Americans - are follow-ups designed to further cement the 'package' deal between the three countries (US, France and Algeria) that we explained three weeks ago.

The US visit, designed to work with the Algerians in identifying and confirming the threat posed by the weapons flow from Libya to 'terrorists' (i.e. AQIM) in the Sahel, has already run into trouble.

The Americans' arrival in Algiers on Sunday 12th June coincided, most extraordinarily, with a highly publicised engagement between a convoy carrying Libyan armaments, mostly explosives and detonators, and the Niger army. The incident was portrayed as 'proof' of the al-Qa'ida threat.

We have now received highly reliable information from Niger of the identity of the main trafficker involved. He is an individual who is not only well known to us, but even better known to the DRS, with whom he is well associated. In short, this latest piece of 'evidence' of the al-Qa'ida threat, like so much else in the region, is, in fact, nothing more than evidence of the continued exaggeration and duplicity over the security and counter-terrorism situation in the entire north-west African region.

For more news and expert analysis about Algeria, please see Algeria Focus and Algeria Politics & Security.

© 2011 Menas Associates