Lamamra: “Algeria’s successful national reconciliation project deserves enshrinement”

The second high-level seminar on peace and security in Africa opened Tuesday in the city of Oran, in western Algeria, in the presence of the representatives of African countries and organizations as well as UN agencies.

 The three-day event opened in the presence of Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra and his Chadian and Angolan counterparts, Moussa Faki Mahamat and George Rebelo Chikoti, in addition to African Union’s Commissioner for Peace and Security Smail Chergui. 

The seminar will address a number of issues and themes relating to security and will assess the actions undertaken so far.

Algerian Foreign Affairs Minister Ramtane Lamamra called Tuesday in Oran to universalize the banning the payments of ransoms to terrorist groups.

In his speech at the opening of the 2nd high-level seminar on peace and security in Africa, the foreign minister called on the continent’s countries to imperatively dry up the funding sources of terrorism through a relentless fight against the networks of crime, calling for “the universalization of the banning of ransom payments.”

“It is through the financial resources made possible through drug trafficking and the ransoms acquired following hostage takings that the terrorist groups strengthen their capacities,” he said.  

Mr Lamamra further affirmed that Algeria had succeeded, through thick and thin, to defeat the scourge of terrorism, stressing that Algeria’s successful national reconciliation project deserves enshrinement at the world scale because of its genuine efficiency and positive spin-offs.

Lamamra also called for an adaptation of the tools and upgrading of the national capacities in the process of consolidating peace and security in Africa.

“The complexity of the challenges we are facing, diversity of crisis situations require not only the political willingness and determination that we possess but also a constant adaptation of our tools, optimization of our approaches and an upgrading of our national capacities,” Mr Lamamra emphasized.