Full Support Needed for U.N. Mission in Mali, Says Algeria

The international community must give its full support to the United Nations to stabilize Mali, a senior Algerian official said on Monday, at the start of a regional security conference in the city of Oran.

"Mali has asked for the help of its partner countries to deploy anti-terrorist forces," said Mohamed Kamel Rezag Barra, presidential adviser for security affairs.

"We must provide full support to the missions of the United Nations to achieve stability in Mali," Rezag Barra told the two-day meeting of the Sahel Region Capacity Building Working Group, which is co-chaired by Algeria and Canada and which numerous European and African representatives are attending.

"The fight against transnational terrorism requires that we put an end to the scourge of poverty, marginalization and bad governance," he added.

The Algerian official made no reference to Sunday's offer by the Al-Qaida-linked Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) to free some Algerian diplomats kidnapped in Mali last year in exchange for three militants held in Algeria.

Algeria has always taken an uncompromising stance towards hostage takers, refusing to pay ransoms and lobbying for its allies to do likewise.

The presidential adviser said it was "proven that ransoms and drug trafficking finance terrorist groups."

Also speaking at Monday's gathering in Oran, Belkacem Salhi, a senior representative of the Algerian community abroad said "the interconnection between terrorism and organized crime in the Sahel region creates a unique threat".

With its long and porous common border, Algeria has more to gain than most from seeing stability restored in neighboring Mali, where a French-led military intervention launched earlier this year has reclaimed most of the territory that Islamist militants had occupied.

In January, dozens of heavily-armed Islamists seized a desert gas plant in southern Algeria in retaliation for the French-led offensive in Mali, with 38 hostages and 29 militants killed in the four-day siege and army rescue operation that followed.