Algeria is to host a meeting of foreign ministers from Saharan states this week to try to hammer out a joint plan of action for tackling the growing threat from al-Qaeda insurgents, officials said.
The insurgents have been kidnapping Westerners and launching bomb attacks, exploiting the Sahara’s vast empty spaces, porous borders and a lack of coordination among the region’s fractious governments.
Algeria’s decision to host the meeting appeared to indicate it was prepared to take a bigger role in the fight against al-Qaeda in the Sahara, something most Western governments have been urging it to do for years.
Foreign Ministers from Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania and Niger will attend the one-day meeting today on the outskirts of the Algerian capital.
The insurgents’ activities in the Sahara have so far been on a small scale, but Western diplomats say they could turn the region into a safe haven along the lines of Somalia or Yemen and use it to prepare major attacks further afield.
The insurgents, who operate as al-Qaeda in the Islamist Maghreb (AQIM), are believed to be holding two Spanish aid workers who were kidnapped in Mauritania last November and an Italian couple, who were seized in Mauritania a month later.
The talks in the Algerian capital will be the first high-level meeting in years among Saharan states that has been devoted to countering the insurgency.
Relations between the region’s governments reached a low last month after Mali freed four suspected militants whose release was demanded by al-Qaeda in return for sparing the life of French hostage Pierre Camatte.
Algeria and Mauritania withdrew their ambassadors from Mali in protest and the Algerian government said Mali’s actions were playing into the hands of the insurgents.
AQIM last year killed a British man, Edwin Dyer, after capturing him on the Niger-Mali border.
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