Butaflika calls for protection of the Palestinians

The Algerian President Abdul Aziz Butaflika has called on the international community to break its silence and shoulder its responsibility towards "the catastrophe the Palestinian people suffer as well as to take urgent measures to ensure the protection of the Palestinian civilians under the Israeli occupation."

In a speech he delivered on Saturday evening in a dinner banquet he had held in honor of the Slovak President Rodolf Schoister, the Algerian President stressed that just peace in the Middle East can not be established without the restoration of the national rights of the Palestinian people to the establishment of their own independent state with Jerusalem as a capital and pull out from the occupied Palestinian territories and the recognition if the rights of the Palestinian refugees to their homeland.

The Algerian President also called for a precise definition of terrorism and to make a distinction between it and the legitimate struggle of people which still seek to restore back their right to independence and freedom to self determination.