Algeria pleads for broader cooperation in the fight against terrorism and organized crime

Algeria has pleaded for a broader regional and international cooperation in the unflagging struggle against terrorism and organized crime in the Sahel region and elsewhere.

• “This is an important meeting and the first of its kind and we hope it will develop synergies and cooperation around a core of four countries, Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Algeria,” Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said at the start of the counter-terrorism conference on Wednesday in Algiers.
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• Mr Medelci hoped all the countries represented at the conference would share intelligence and work together to develop the impoverished desert regions.
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•  The countries of the sub-Sahara region, which are already dealing with armed terrorists and smugglers, are now confronted with an influx of fighters fleeing the Libyan civil war, Niger’s foreign minister said Wednesday.
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• Mohamed Bazoum spoke during the two-day conference on counter- terrorism in the  Sahel region that was originally expected to focus just on al-Qaida, but has now become inextricably tied up with the civil war in neighboring Libya.
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• Algeria complains that the instability next door has sent a flood of weapons into hands of terrorists and smugglers in the southern Saharan regions.
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• “The repercussion of the Libyan crisis on the Sahel region have become palpable, particularly with the arrival of large amounts of weapons and four-wheel drive vehicles and the return of armed individuals involved in the Libyan crisis,” said Bazoum.
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• Many of these have fled Libya with the victory of Libyan revolutionaries, sending an influx of hardened fighters into the impoverished desert communities around the border that don’t have the means to absorb the new arrivals.
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• There have also been several convoys of armed men crossing into Niger from Libya, confirmed Bazoum, though he denied any sheltering in Niger of Gadhafi or his family.
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• The minister called for a higher profile joint military presence from Algeria, Mali, Niger and Mauritania to patrol the vast wastes of the sub-Sahara region that are now the stomping grounds for heavily armed smugglers as well as the North African off-shoot of al-Qaida.
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• “The presence of these people in Niger creates serious security problems,” Bazoum added.
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• Algeria’s minister delegate in charge of Maghrebian and African affairs, Abdelkader Messahel, underlined for his part that the partner countries needed to work together to dry up the terrorists’ sources of revenue, particularly the ransoms from kidnapping.
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• “These revenues permit terrorist groups to acquire arms, obtain new recruits and improve their logistic capabilities,” Messahel said.
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