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Taken from la gazette du maroc.


La Gazette du Maroc: Some Algerian generals oppose solution to Sahara conflict, former counterintelligence official
Morocco-Algeria, Politics, 6/6/2005

As long as some Algerian Generals are still in power, we "cannot hope for a normalization between Morocco and Algeria or for a solution to the Sahara conflict," stated Colonel Mohamed Samraoui, former aid of head of Algerian counterintelligence service (DRS), Smain Lamari.

In an interview published Monday by "La Gazette du Maroc" weekly, Samraoui said former Algerian president Ahmed Boudiaf wanted to solve the Sahara conflict and disapproved of the persistence of tensions with Morocco.

Algeria is the main supporter of the Polisario Front that claims the separation of Morocco's southern provinces (known as the Sahara). The former Spanish colony was retrieved by Morocco in 1975 under Madrid Accords signed with Mauritanian and Spain.

Boudiaf "used to repeat that he is for a strong and united Maghreb," he said, noting that this position "did not suit the interests of Generals like Belkheir, Nezzar, Mediene, Mohamed Lamari and Smain Lamari who made of strains with Morocco the focus of their geopolitical strategy."

According to colonel Samraoui, currently a political refugee in Germany, "these Generals block and sabotage any initiative of rapprochement between the two countries."

Samraoui believes the Generals are capable of the worst. He said "they may even provoke a military conflict with Morocco" if it suits their interests.

President Bouteflika, he went on, is only a "political faade of the army" and he is in power "by the will of the army."

Author of the book "Chronicles on Bloody years," Colonel Samraoui holds the army responsible for massacres of Algerian civilians and rejects the statements of General Khalid Nezar who maintains that "war in Algeria is the deed of Islamists."

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up !