Bouteflika promises to allow Islamic Salvation Front to form political party

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika promised to allowing the prohibited Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) to reorganize as a political party on the condition that a new leadership is chosen for it.

Bouteflika said he is expressing his doubts over the way in which the Algerian authorities canceled the elections of 1992, which the FIS was about to win.

He said he will release the chief of the front, Abbas Madani, from house arrest on the condition that he immediately abandon politics and declare that he will never work in politics again.

The Algerian News Agency quoted Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika as telling the French daily, "Violence started the day when the constitution was neglected in order to create disastrous conditions for political manipulations of a common value for all Algerians."

He continued that the Algerian people are "the whole nation, the unique and the only holder of the absolute national sovereignty."

Bouteflika said in an interview with the French daily Liberte that, "Civil harmony and the reconciliation of the nation with itself, are major concerns of the Algerian society."

On terrorism, he said, "The victims of terrorism particularly have the right to know who is the guilty and of what he is guilty." He added, "Justice has the duty to act with full rigour of the law taking into consideration all facts, and facts only."