Posted on 04/15/2007 10:06:55 PM PDT by processing please hold
ALGIERS, Algeria -- Algeria's Foreign Ministry summoned a senior American diplomat on Sunday to complain that the U.S. Embassy's weekend warning of more possible terror attacks in the capital was "irresponsible," the official news agency reported.
The embassy warning on Saturday, repeated on television stations, further alarmed Algerians who were already reeling from double suicide bombings Wednesday that killed at least 30 people in Algiers. An Islamic extremist group claimed responsibility for those attacks.
There was also a new report on Sunday of another attack by suspected Islamic extremists on Friday. The daily El Watan said four soldiers were killed and two guards were wounded in the attack on an army encampment and a barracks in the village of M'setas, about 31 miles east of the capital.
An Islamic insurgency to topple Algeria's secular government erupted in 1992 after the army canceled elections that a Muslim fundamentalist party was set to win. Up to 200,000 people - militants, security forces and civilians - have been killed.
Though violence in the country has dropped dramatically since the height of the insurgency, sporadic attacks continue.
The Foreign Ministry summoned the No. 2 U.S. Embassy official, Thomas F. Daughton, to advise the U.S. mission of its "obligation to scrupulously respect the sovereignty" of Algeria and of "the principle of noninterference in its internal affairs," official news agency APS reported.
Algeria is a valuable U.S. ally in the international effort to defeat al-Qaida.
APS reported that the Foreign Ministry told Daughton "tempestuous initiatives of this type are counterproductive and irresponsible given the demands of cooperation in the fight against terrorism."
U.S. Embassy spokesman Matt Goshko had no immediate comment.
The Algerian media criticized the U.S. warning. El Watan called it "indecent" and suggested that U.S. Ambassador Robert Stephen Ford be expelled.
Also on Sunday, Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni lowered the death toll from Wednesday's attacks to 30 from 33 and said 37 people remained hospitalized. The coordinated attacks targeted the prime minister's office and a police station.
Authorities had already identified one of the three bombers. Yazid Zerhouni told reporters security forces have identified the other two and they were Algerians, like the first. But they did not immediately provide names.
The Arabic-language newspaper El Khebar reported Saturday that the man who drove a vehicle loaded with explosives into the prime minister's office was Merouane Boudina, 23, one of 10 brothers and sisters from a poor neighborhood in southern Algiers. Both El Khebar and the French-language daily Liberte said he had been in and out of jail for drug trafficking.
Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for the attacks. The group, formerly called the GSPC, was built on the foundations of an Algerian insurgency. Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa became officially linked to al-Qaida at the start of the year.
How valuable is an ally that denies the jihadi enemy's existence?
Why would it upset them and their threatening to expel ambassador Ford for warning of possible more attacks. It doesn't make sense to me.
My guess is that (as usual) there’s much more to this story than that which is reported. Hold on to your judgement hats for a little while.
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