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Sick Bouteflika off to France
20/04/2006 12:53 - (SA)
Paris - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is in France for a medical "check-up", five months after undergoing stomach surgery in Paris, says a French medical source on Thursday.
Other sources said the 69-year-old Bouteflika was at Paris Military Hospital, where he underwent surgery for a bleeding stomach ulcer in November, and that it was his third visit since that operation.
However, this was not confirmed by Val de Grace Military Hospital.
His three-week hospital stay, followed by two weeks' convalescence, had been shrouded in secrecy, and the lack of official information had fuelled fears that his condition might be more serious than admitted.
France colonisation 'genocide'
Algiers had dismissed as "crazy rumours" the speculation about his health. Bouteflika's trip to France came at a time of diplomatic tension between France and its former north African colony.
The Algerian leader caused a stir at the weekend by denouncing France's colonisation of his country, from 1830 to 1962, as a "genocide of Algerian identity".
In power since 1999, Bouteflika was widely credited with ending Algeria's brutal civil war, which had claimed some 150 000 lives since 1992.
However, he had also been faulted for an economic situation that failed to match the promise of the country's natural and human resources.
- AFP
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