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By Houda Mzioudet.
Tripoli, 8 December 2013:
Algerian Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal is to visit Libya at the end of the month for . . .[restrict]talks on security.
Prime Minister Ali Zeidan met his Algerian opposite number in Paris where both have been attending the Franco-African summit.
A foreign ministry spokesman told the Libya Herald: “The visit will involve talks about Libyan-Algerian relations, mutual strategic interests between both countries, especially border control”.
Sellal said at the summit that stability was a key element for the development of North Africa.
The border between Libyan and Algeria stretches over 900 km. Since the revolution it has become highly porous with weapons and militants flowing both ways. Since the In Amenas attack this January, Algerian forces have stepped up border patrols and intercepted a number of weapons smugglers. But the frontier remains extremely difficult to patrol and there has been no major interdiction of Al-Qaeda affiliated militants.
During the summit, Zeidan gave an interview to France24 in which he said that he had been kidnapped because he stood for democracy and wanted to establish a free Libya. He said that investigations into his abduction were continuing, as they were into to latest killing of a US citizen in Benghazi and into the 2012 murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens, where he said some people were in investigative custody.
Zeidan also insisted that many people in Libya were false revolutionaries, because the true revolutionaries had long given up their weapons and returned to their normal lives. Nevertheless he said that what was happening in Libya at the moment was to be expected after a revolution. There were no conflicts between the government and the Congress, he said, but they were in full agreement.
He also paid tribute to the late Nelson Mandela, saying even though the South African politician had stood by Qaddafi until the last minute, Libyans could not forget that he was a freedom fighter and a famous activist.
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