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- WORLD, Page 47World NotesALGERIAAnother State Of Siege
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- Algeria's President Chadli Bendjedid last week took a daring
- gamble that given the choice, Algerians will decline to replace
- him with an Islamic fundamentalist. After two weeks of angry
- antigovernment demonstrations by Islamic fundamentalists and
- their supporters, Bendjedid agreed to hold both presidential and
- parliamentary elections within the next six months in exchange
- for a cessation of hostilities by the protesters.
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- Thousands of fundamentalists had battled against police,
- demanding that elections scheduled for June 27 include the
- presidency as well as the legislature. By the beginning of last
- week, clouds of tear gas hung over the capital and about a dozen
- people had been killed in what looked like a second Battle of
- Algiers -- this time between the fundamentalist Islamic
- Salvation Front, led by Abassi Madani, and the National
- Liberation Front government, which has ruled Algeria since the
- country's independence from France in 1962. In retaliation,
- Bendjedid declared a state of siege, the postponement of
- national elections and the dismissal of Prime Minister Mouloud
- Hamrouche and his government. Two days later, he made his
- concession to fundamentalist demands.
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