Britain's ambassador to Algeria has asked for permission to visit the sites of recent massacres of civilians, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, told the European Parliament yesterday.
Earlier Mr Cook said he was surprised by Algeria's rejection of a proposed EU mission and said its composition should not be a sticking point.
Meanwhile, the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) attacked Algeria's rejection of the EU mission, saying Algiers was desperate to hide evidence of atrocities, such as mass graves.
Algeria had rejected as too low-level a proposed visit by a troika of EU officials scheduled for tomorrow. The EU, whose 15 members form Algeria's most important trading partners, had proposed sending political directors from Britain, Luxembourg and Austria.
The Algerian authorities have said that an EU visit must take place with the goal of combating terrorism and have rejected calls for an international commission of inquiry into violence which has left more than 65,000 dead since 1992.
Mr Cook said: "We want to find out how we can help. We have seen no evidence to support allegations of involvement by the Algerian security authorities."
He also said it was in Algeria's own interest to allow access for the press to judge for itself who exactly was responsible for massacres which have caused "revulsion and horror" in Europe in recent weeks.
He was reporting to the assembly on the priorities of Britain's current European Union presidency.
Mr Cook told BBC Radio: "The level of the troika need not be a sticking point. We will certainly be exploring with them [the Algerians] how we can find an outcome that is acceptable to both sides. What is important here is that we should get that mission into Algeria to find out the facts on the ground and to work out how Europe can help to end the suffering of the Algerian people."
He said: "We are surprised at this latest development which I must say I'm not sure is in the interests of the Algerian people themselves because they do need help."
The Algerian Foreign Minister, Mr Ahmed Attaf, had criticised the proposed level of the visit, saying it did not match up to the important matters needing discussion, given the EU was demanding that Algeria provide government-level representation.
Algeria had agreed to the visit on condition that it be confined to discussions on fighting terrorism and not human right issues.
The FIS overseas spokesman, Mr Abdelkarim Ouldadda, said the FIS could guide international investigators to places where numbers of its members, liquidated by the security services, were buried in unmarked trenches.
Mr Ouldadda said the authorities seemed determined to resist outside attempts to discover who was behind the massacres, the most recent of which have taken some 1,100 lives in the last few weeks alone.
"If the authorities have nothing with which to reproach themselves it is in their own interests to let this [mission] come," he said.
But he alleged that some members of the security forces were "in army khaki during the day and in Afghan garb with beards by night. . . In Algeria, there are mass graves, just as they existed in Bosnia," Mr Ouldadda said.
He predicted that eventually outside investigators would "discover extra-judicial liquidations committed by the forces of the government, collective liquidations of people of the FIS. . . buried in common graves."
Algerian authorities have arrested the No 3 official of FIS in Algiers, the movement's overseas office said in Bonn yesterday. It said Mr Abdelkader Hachani was arrested on Tuesday night and taken to police headquarters in Algiers "for no apparent reason".
Meanwhile a court in Algiers sentenced nine people to death over their involvement in a 1995 mutiny at the Serkadji prison that left at least 100 people dead.
The leading suspect, a guard, was accused of having provided the keys leading to cells holding Islamist inmates and of allowing the smuggling into the prison of four automatic pistols and two grenades.