Algerians believe Islamists were behind bomb attack

ALGERIA's relations with France are always emotional reaction to the bombing which killed two people in Paris on Tuesday night was no exception.

Although the attack was not claimed, many Algerians assumed it was done by the extremist Algerian Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which carried out a bombing campaign that killed 10 people in France in 1995. The group's leader in France, Mr Ali Touchent, was never arrested and French police long feared he would resurface.

The GIA may have acted in France because censorship" in Algeria "deprived them of the oxygen of publicity", a foreign ministry official said, using a phrase of Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Others saw a link with last week's constitutional referendum, which was condemned by the fundamentalists. By cheating on the results, one middle class Algerian said, the government not only lost credibility but "legitimised violence".

Even as Algerians speculated on, the GIA's responsibility, they worried about a backlash against friends and relatives in France. "The net will tighten again," said an editorial in the Algiers daily Le Matin, "with all the hatred, bitterness and racism this brings.

Algerian officials claim their country is fighting "Islamic terror" for the benefit of the West. If other countries are implicated in their struggle, so much the better. "The bombing shows that security is collective," Dr Said Ayachi, an influential member of the dominant, National Liberation Front (FLN) and the president of the Algerian Red Crescent, told The Irish Times.

"Security doesn't involve just one country. Algerian terrorists receive arms and money from abroad. If there was a concerted, effort by the international community to eradicate terrorism, it would help the situation in Algeria."

It was just such reasoning that led French intelligence officers to suspect that Algerian secret service agents - not the GIA - might have carried out the first Paris bombing in July 1995. The allegations, leaked to French newspapers, enraged the government in Algiers.

However absurdly, a retired Algerian official repaid the French in kind: "The French government is weak, with uncharismatic leaders," he said. "Their social situation is a mess. It's very good for the French government that this bombing happened now, because no one is talking about anything else. Maybe French intelligence did it."

Algerian officials often compare their civil war to violence in Northern Ireland or Basque separatism in Spain. Algerian papers give substantial coverage to Corsican attacks in France.

Such inappropriate comparisons are a way of dismissing Algeria's problems as the normal plight of any country. When Algerian fundamentalists strike in France, Algerian officials hope it will prove to Paris and the world that the fundamentalists are irrational monsters.

The Islamists may be horribly cruel, but their attacks are based on cold calculation. France lends or gives £720 million to the Algiers government every year and is Algeria's main creditor. It has also supplied military assistance to the Algerian armed forces. If they could force Paris to end all support for President Liamine Zeroual, the extremists believe, his regime would collapse.

In January 1992 the late President Mitterrand criticised the Algerian military for cancelling parliamentary elections, the move which sparked the civil war.

Algerian officials continue to cite Mr Mitterrand's words as proof of French ill will towards them.