Algerian police dismissed an announcement by the main rebel group that it had joined al-Qaeda, saying that although its fighters remained a worry they lacked the capacity to conduct major attacks.
”Their threats don’t scare us,” El Watan newspaper quoted Surete Nationale director general Ali Tounsi as saying in reaction to the announcement last week by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).
”If they had the means to do something [like al-Qaeda], they would have already done it. We have taken all the measures and have all the resources to guarantee security. The government has never stinted on our resources.”
GSPC, which has rejected a government amnesty aimed at ending years of violence, also issued a statement in September 2003 in which it announced its allegiance to al-Qaeda.
Experts estimate about 500 fighters, most of them GSPC members, are still at large waging a campaign to overturn the government and establish purist Islamist rule.
About 300 gave themselves up during a six-month amnesty for Islamist guerrillas that expired at the end of August under a government-backed national reconciliation programme.
Tounsi said those who remained in the bush were a worry and they ought to disarm.
”It’s not those who’ve given themselves in that are worrying, but those who are still armed,” he said.
Islamists began an armed revolt in 1992 after the then military backed authorities, fearing an Islamic revolution, scrapped a parliamentary election.
Up to 200 000 people are estimated to have been killed in the fighting. The violence has sharply subsided in recent years. — Reuters