CODEL MCCOLLUM MEETS THE NEW PRIME MINISTER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ALGIERS 000800

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/16/2018
TAGS: PREL PGOV KDEM AG
SUBJECT: CODEL MCCOLLUM MEETS THE NEW PRIME MINISTER

REF: A. ALGIERS 728

B. ALGIERS 750

Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i. Thomas F. Daughton;
reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) SUMMARY: In a June 30 meeting with Codel McCollum,
Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia proved surprisingly forthcoming
about Algeria's past mistakes and his own aggressive
anti-Islamist credentials, while professing support for WTO
accession and religious freedom within Algeria. His offered
some insight into his priorities which, while constrained in
many respects, still represent a step forward from the
statist and Islamist views of his predecessor, Abdelaziz
Belkhadem. Ouyahia, who had only been in office for a week,
conducted the meeting entirely in English and raised both
religious freedom and WTO without bidding, apparently aware
that both issues were high on the U.S. agenda. He took pains
to explain to Rep. McCollum what he saw as the unique
challenges facing Algeria, and was generally positive about
the state of bilateral relations. END SUMMARY.

LEARNING FROM PAST MISTAKES
--------------


2. (C) Ouyahia began his tour d'horizon in the 1980s, telling
Codel McCollum that Algeria should have acted then to
liberalize its economy and end one-party rule. When Algeria
finally did move, he said, it was in a "tragic economic
crisis" and shackled by a welfare-state mentality. Such a
mentality, he said, is fine if the state has money, but in
Algeria's case it became "a huge problem" as "we did not have
any money and we had huge debts at the end of the 1980s."
Ouyahia said he regretted that the Algerian army fired on the
population during the October 1988 social explosion. This he
described as "a tragedy, not democracy." At the same time,
Ouyahia said, Algeria also made the mistake of "politicizing
our religion," which led directly to the rise of the Islamic
Salvation Front (FIS). Algeria, he explained, also took the
wrong track in moving towards a market economy, opening the
door to imports that crippled local industry instead of first
privatizing state enterprises. These mistakes, in his view,
led to the "nightmare" of the 1990s, during which Algeria had
fought -- "successfully" -- to avoid becoming "like
Afghanistan."

LOSING MY RELIGION
--------------


3. (C) While conceding his support for President Bouteflika's
program of national reconciliation because "we cannot keep
fighting forever," Ouyahia made no secret of his aggressive
anti-Islamist credentials. "I am an eradicateur," Ouyahia
told Codel McCollum, using the French term that refers to
those who advocated the complete eradication of the
terrorists of the 1990s. Islamist extremism, in Ouyahia's
view, represents a failure of the system, as "nobody is a
natural kamikaze." Referring to the FIS, GIA and other
Islamist elements in the 1990s as "our terrorists," Ouyahia
said that they had support from within the population, as
over 3 million people voted for the FIS in the elections of

1990. Ouyahia told McCollum that "maybe we should have
stopped or delayed" the whole process early on, as "our
people were not prepared to fight." He went on to say that
the FIS was able to "play the victim card" to gain popular
support because of the government's "possible mistake" in
suspending the electoral process in 1991.


4. (C) At the time of the FIS victory in the 1990 and 1991
elections, Ouyahia noted, Algeria had merely 25,000 police
and 12,000 gendarmes, forcing the government to mobilize and
arm ordinary citizens. He spoke harshly of what he
considered the "hypocrisy" of the FIS and GIA, who "spoke of
social justice and taking care of people but then slaughtered
them." Ouyahia told McCollum that Algeria felt very alone as
the violence of the 1990s caught fire, as "very few within
and outside Algeria knew what was going on."


5. (C) Ouyahia was clear in his support for Bouteflika's
program of amnesty for repentant terrorists, but also implied
that it must proceed alongside efforts to eradicate those who
choose not to repent. He said that the national
reconciliation movement had brought "maybe 1000 people" back

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to their homes, while "we probably killed about 2000" as the
fighting continued. Taking care of the families of the
disappeared was complicated further, Ouyahia said, by the
rules of Islam that prohibit settlement of an estate unless
the decedent is confirmed dead. He was adamant that Algeria
would "finish the job, no matter how long it takes," but
asserted with some satisfaction that Islamists no longer
boasted widespread support from among the population.
Ouyahia told Codel McCollum that he saw Afghanistan as "the
real unfinished story" the U.S. should focus on, although he
was wary of the stability of Pakistan, saying that if
Pakistan became destabilized or descended into chaos, "God
protect the whole planet."

WTO ON THE BRAIN
--------------


6. (C) Political consultant Arslan Chikhaoui, who has close
ties to Ouyahia and his National Democratic Rally (RND),told
us on June 28 that one of Ouyahia's first acts as PM was to
order a June 30 primetime TV roundtable discussion to
"de-dramatize" WTO, in which Chikhaoui and a variety of
consultants and government officials participated. Ouyahia
told Codel McCollum that WTO accession was one of his top
priorities, as "it would not be good for the world if Algeria
became a hole." He acknowledged that WTO accession would
involve difficult decisions, but added that Algeria's
partners needed to understand its particularities. He said
that WTO was the next logical step in an economic evolution
that began with wiping out IMF debt in the 1990s and then
setting up a partnership with the European Union during
Bouteflika's first term. At least "we are close to being one
of the better kids in school" in terms of honoring
commitments to the IMF, he said.


7. (C) Ouyahia went on to explain that high energy prices
afforded Algeria a window of opportunity, which he hoped to
use to diversify the economy away from hydrocarbons while
supporting prices, building housing and infrastructure, and
reforming the agricultural sector. He asserted that the
subsidized price of natural gas in the domestic market was a
business incentive for foreign investors, even as he conceded
that it was an obstacle to WTO accession, but pointed out
that Algeria also had a responsibility to "protect its
people" against potentially destabilizing price increases.
He stressed to Codel McCollum, "please tell your people that
we are not being coy; some of these questions are life and
death for us."

OUYAHIA AND THE FREEDOM AGENDA
--------------


8. (C) Ouyahia himself raised the issue of religious freedom,
citing a recent letter to Bouteflika signed by 30 members of
Congress. He asserted that Algeria "never had any problem"
with religious freedom in the past, and had good relations
with Christians and Jews, even protecting the Jewish
community from the Nazis during World War II. What has
happened recently, he explained, came directly out of the FIS
and the process of "Islamization." Ouyahia was adamant that
"we have enough mosques," saying there are roughly 17,000
mosques in Algeria today, up from 14,000 ten years ago.
Ouyahia explained the religion provisions in the 2001 penal
code he promulgated as minister of justice during
Bouteflika's first term as a reaction to the Islamist threat
of the 1990s. "We said enough is enough," he noted, and took
steps such as closing mosques outside prayer time to avoid
providing venues for extremists to meet. This, he explained,
was the start of Algeria's efforts to provide guidelines for
the practice of organized religion in officially designated
places of worship that in the case of Islam could be
monitored and controlled by the government in order to
prevent a repeat of the 1990s.


9. (C) Ouyahia explained that his 2001 penal code provided
the guidelines for the practice of Islam. Later, shortly
after Ouyahia returned for a second stint as prime minister
in May 2003, the Algerian government passed Ordinance 06-03,
which was designed to extend the same guidelines to
non-Muslim worship. "As our constitution guarantees freedom
of speech and conscience," Ouyahia explained, "we had to make
sure we did this for all religions in a way that did not
violate our constitution." Ouyahia orally dissected

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Ordinance 06-03 into three basic concepts: that religion must
be organized around known and declared churches; that houses
of worship should be public places, "not houses or garages";
and that no religious group should exploit the despair of the
population in order to proselytize and convert. Ouyahia
stated it was "unfair to pay converts and take advantage of
people."


10. (C) According to Ouyahia, Ordinance 06-03 gave religious
groups six months to comply. He seemed puzzled by the
attention the law was receiving only now, more than two years
later. He apologized profusely for "the attitude of some of
my people," citing Minister of Religious Affairs Bouabdallah
Ghoulamallah's comment that "conversion is like terrorism."
Ouyahia leaned forward to Rep. McCollum and said, "please be
assured that on the matter of religion, our record is clear
and will remain clear." Ouyahia referred to human rights
more generally in Algeria as "an ongoing journey" that was
moving in the right direction within the context of the
challenges of the last 20 years.

MOVING A BUREAUCRACY WITH COFFEE AND CIGARETTES
-------------- --


11. (C) COMMENT: As Chikhaoui and others have told us,
Ouyahia is a workaholic who once explained his long workdays
to his wife by saying, "Algeria has given me everything,
therefore I must give everything to Algeria." Our contacts
close to him tell us he often skips meals and is fueled by
coffee and cigarettes, working from early in the morning
until late at night. He is known for his ability to work the
system to carry out a given agenda, and indeed has sought
since being reappointed PM to portray himself as there to
complete the president's agenda before the end of
Bouteflika's term in early 2009. Ouyahia runs his RND
cleanly and efficiently from the top down, and its members
carry a uniform message without the internal dissent visible
in its two ruling coalition partners. With Rep. McCollum,
Ouyahia was clear about the challenges facing him, citing
seeping corruption down to the local level as his biggest
challenge. He also spoke in detail about the contents of a
constitutional revision he viewed as imminent (ref B).
Parliament concluded its spring session on July 15, however,
without no move on a constitutional amendment and with
Ouyahia telling the press, "everything in its time." His
miscue on the amendment's timing underscores that although
Ouyahia may be an effective technocrat, there are clear
limits to his mandate and even to his knowledge about
decisionmaking on key issues. End Comment.


12. (U) Codel McCollum did not have the opportunity to clear
this message. MINIMIZE considered.
DAUGHTON