Slaughter goes on as 173 die in 10 days

ONLY the numbers and names of the villages change in the past 10 days, 173 people have been shot or hacked to death, burned or beheaded, in the fertile Mitidja plain skirting Algiers. Thirty more civilians were massacred during the night of Sunday to Monday in the village of Douar Chaib Mohamed, 35 kms south of Algiers, the government announced yesterday.

The statement contained the usual allusion to "cowardly slaughter" by a group of terrorists".

It was also with a sense of deja vu and growing desperation that Algerian opposition parties met in Madrid at the weekend. They appealed to the Algerian government for genuine political dialogue with the opposition - including the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), banned since 1992.

The chances of the government responding are zero when the same parties made a similar appeal for a negotiated settlement to Algeria's civil war in January, 1995, their "Rome Platform" was condemned by President Liamine Zeroual as "foreign intervention" in Algerian affairs. A petition for peace drawn up in Algiers last November received equally short shrift.

Meanwhile, the war's casualty toll continues its macabre ascent.

Ali Yahia Abdenour, the president of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights, told the Madrid meeting that the government holds 35,000 prisoners, that 100,000 people have been killed, and that thousands more are missing.

"This is the result of the security policy of President Zeroual and the `eradicators' who want `the peace of cemeteries'," Mr Abdenour said. He claimed that several FIS activists who had lived in Europe and were sent back to Algeria were tortured or murdered.

The parties which met in Madrid could not agree on whether they should participate in parliamentary elections scheduled for June 5th. The FIS, represented by Abdelkrim Ould Adda, a psychologist who lives in Brussels, urged the others to boycott the poll. "The government has transformed the State into a terrorist institution," Mr Adda told Le Monde.

Mr Adda, who shunned the Islamic robes favoured by FIS leaders in the past for a suit and tie, was at pains to make the fundamentalist party appear moderate. "We do not want a theocratic state, but a civil state in the framework of Islam," he said. The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) - believed responsible for most of the massacres in Algeria - was, he said, "made up of extremists, criminals and people from (Algerian government) military security who manipulate them".

While the authorities go ahead with their election plans and violence escalates, life grows ever more difficult, even in the relatively safe city centres. Water and electricity cuts are common.

Because so many people die, with their throats slashed, the traditional method of slaughtering animals has taken on a sinister new meaning, and the government has banned Algerians from slashing the throats of sheep to celebrate the Muslim Eid El Kebir feast on Friday.