PRESIDENT Liamine Zeroual of Algeria announced yesterday that legislative elections would be held by June 1997 and would be followed by local polls. Gen Zeroual also plans to change the law on political parties and voting before the elections.
He told a meeting of media executives - his first since his election last November - that the elections would be preceded by a mid year national conference grouping "all the forces of the nation".
Gen Zeroual's announcement followed the first phase of discussions last month with various political leaders and parties, excluding the banned Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).
Gen Zeroual was elected on November 16th last with 61 per cent of the vote in Algeria's first multiparty presidential election. There was a 75 per cent voter turn out, although the poll was boycotted by the National Liberation Front, once Algeria's sole political party, and the Socialist Forces Front, then allied with FIS.
However, the two parties took part last month in discussions on the planned legislative elections and the talks are due to resume by the end of this month.
Gen Zeroual insisted yesterday he wanted to include the country's full "political community" in an effort to end civil strife. "It is necessary to find a final solution through the consultation of all of the political community in order to pull the country out of its crisis," he said. "We can get out of the crisis for one year or more but we will fail again if we will not attack the roots of the crisis."
Gen Zeroual played down the apparent increased violence saying the "security situation is going through a constant improvement" thanks to "strong blows brought by security forces against terrorist groups". He claimed more than 1,000 guerrillas had surrendered to authorities since the government offered clemency measures.
FIS began its campaign to topple the secular government after the army intervened in January 1992 to cancel elections that FIS was about to win.
FIS has warned the bloods lied will continue in Algeria unless it is part of a political settlement. The violence has claimed more than 50,000 lives since 1992.
Algerian newspapers reported yesterday that a bomb exploded at a bus stop near an elementary school in north east Algeria, killing two people and wounding 14.
The home made bomb went off in Tizi Ouzou, 90 km east of Algiers, on Saturday afternoon. At the same time three gunmen, thought to be Muslim rebels, shot dead a former interior minister, Mr Mohamed Hardi (53), in a park car in the Oued Smar district of Algiers.