Enlarge imageBy Lamine Chikhi
ALGIERS (Reuters) - The founder of the group that claimed responsibility for last week’s deadly Algiers bombings called on militants to put down their weapons under a government amnesty and stop trying to turn Algeria into a "second Iraq".
Hassan Hattab made the comments in a letter to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika published on Monday by Echorouk daily after three bombs exploded in Algiers on Wednesday killing 33 people.
He described the group that claimed responsibility for the bombings, which changed its name in January from the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) to al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, as "a small group that wants to transform Algeria into a second Iraq".
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"I call on the militants to give up the fight," he said.
"We urge the president to reopen the national reconciliation file and extend its deadline. I can thump those seeking to take Algeria to its painful past," he added without elaborating.
Hattab remains an influential figure among Islamist fighters even though the group he helped found is now headed by another man, Abdelmalek Droudkel, also known as Abu Musab Abdul Wadud.
The explosions raised fears that the north African oil- and gas-exporting country might return to the intense political violence of the 1990s when tens of thousands of Islamist guerrillas fought the army to try to set up Islamic rule.
Bouteflika, who has yet to directly comment on the attacks, offered an amnesty for rebels last year as part of a reconciliation policy aimed at ending years of violence.
More than 2,000 rebels were freed from jail and dozens of fighters surrendered under the amnesty, which lasted from late February to late August 2006.
Droudkel has rejected the amnesty offer and it is not known whether Hattab himself has officially accepted amnesty.
But speculation Hattab had won some sort of accommodation with the government arose last year when he gave an interview in Algeria to the Asharq al-Awsat daily supporting the amnesty.
Algeria plunged into conflict when militants unleashed a holy war or jihad after the army cancelled elections in 1992, which the radical Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was set to win.
Authorities then feared an Iranian style revolution and up to 200,000 people were killed during the Islamic uprising.
The GSPC was formed in 1998 when Hattab broke away from the Armed Islamic Group in protest at its massacres of civilians. He said the GSPC would focus its attacks on police and soldiers.
ORIGINAL ISLAMIST REBELS CONDEMN ATTACKS
FIS founders Abassi Madani and Ali Belhadj also condemned the attacks. "Al Qaeda made a big mistake in using violence in a country in desperate need of a political solution," Madani, who lives in Qatar, was quoted as telling daily El Khabar.
The FIS remains banned.
Visiting Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema said after meeting his Algerian counterpart Mohamed Bedjaoui: "The attacks in Algiers) show fundamentalist terrorism is not just the enemy of the West, it’s the enemy of progress and democracy in the Arab world. We are all at risk."
"The problem is isolating and fighting these terrorist groups to avoid that a disease that appeared to have been eradicated in Algeria comes back as a dangerous threat."
