EU will keep US posted on its mission to Algeria

The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook -- who is in Washington -- has said the United States would be kept informed about a European fact-finding mission to Algeria due next week.

After talks with the US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, Mr Cooke said the Americans and the Europeans share the same revulsion of the bloodshed in Algeria.

On Thursday, he announced that three ministers from the European Union would be going to Algiers to discuss the violence and consider ways to help end it.

About eighty-thousand people are thought to have died in six years of political violence in Algeria.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service