ALGERIA: Another State Of Siege

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Algeria's President Chadli Bendjedid last week took a daring gamble that given the choice, Algerians will decline to replace him with an Islamic fundamentalist. After two weeks of angry antigovernment demonstrations by Islamic fundamentalists and their supporters, Bendjedid agreed to hold both presidential and parliamentary elections within the next six months in exchange for a cessation of hostilities by the protesters.

Thousands of fundamentalists had battled against police, demanding that elections scheduled for June 27 include the presidency as well as the legislature. By the beginning of last week, clouds of tear gas hung over the capital and about a dozen people had been killed in what looked like a second Battle of Algiers -- this time between the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front, led by Abassi Madani, and the National Liberation Front government, which has ruled Algeria since the country's independence from France in 1962. In retaliation, Bendjedid declared a state of siege, the postponement of national elections and the dismissal of Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche and his government. Two days later, he made his concession to fundamentalist demands.