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 ALGIERS 00000800 002 OF 003 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 ALGIERS 00000800 003 OF 003 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