Luxembourg EU envoy `regrets' Algerian response to visit

The Luxembourg member of the European Union troika which visited Algeria has expressed his regret at the reaction of Algerian officials to the visit.

In comments broadcast by Radio France Internationale, Luxembourg's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Georges Wohlfart, said the Algerians turned down a suggestion by the troika that the United Nations' rapporteur for human rights should verify that the government had nothing to hide.

"The government refused our delegation's offer, saying that they would be presenting their annual report on human rights at the end of March, that this report would be examined by UN bodies, that if there were still questions which could not easily be answered there would then be this UN special envoy," Wohlfart said.

"We pleaded for openness and transparency, I would say 100 per cent transparency, but the Algerians want to follow their own path, which is a completely legal, unexceptional path, but we pleaded for greater transparency, for the greatest possible openness.

"My second regret is that it was not possible to see the victims of the massacres perpetrated in the past few weeks. I think that would have been a gesture of solidarity, of compassion, towards the victims and their family," Wohlfart said.

"Another thing we regret is that humanitarian aid, which we proposed offering our Algerian friends, was refused. It is well-known that Algeria itself sees the problem from a strictly humanitarian point of view," he said.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.