Hostage drama: Algeria admits mistakes
2013-01-26 12:00
Davos - Algeria's foreign minister acknowledged that
security forces made mistakes in a hostage crisis at a Saharan gas plant in
which many foreign workers were killed by Algerian military strikes.
Mourad Medelci, in an Associated Press interview, also
conceded that Algeria will need international help to better fight terrorism.
Algeria's decision to refuse foreign offers of aid in handling the crisis, and
to send the military to fire on vehicles full of hostages, drew widespread
international criticism.
The 16 January attack, which an al-Qaeda-affiliated organisation
has claimed responsibility for, sent scores of foreign energy workers fleeing
across the desert for their lives. A four-day siege by Algerian forces on the
complex left at least 37 hostages and 29 militants dead. Some of the fatalities
were badly burned, making it difficult to identify them.
"We are in the process of assessing our mistakes. In
that assessment we are leaning more towards establishing that the operation was
a success," Medelci told the AP at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland on Friday.
He said Algeria is likely to reinforce security measures at
sites where multinationals operate in the oil- and gas-rich country. But he
insisted that foreign workers in Algeria "will continue to work in Algeria
and that is the best way to answer the terrorists".
He defended the government's decision to attack instead of
negotiating. "Faced with such an attitude [of terrorism], it's not just
words that solve the problem. It's action," he said.
But he admitted that Algeria, which faced years of internal
extremist violence, "can't continue to face international terrorism alone.
It absolutely needs support."
He argued that Algeria wasn't the target of the attack, but
"they are targeting investors in Algeria and the foreigners who work there".
- AP
