Brussels, 04/03/2014 (Agence Europe) - The former Algerian ambassador to Brussels, Halim Benattallah, who went on to become the secretary of state to the Algerian community abroad, has questioned his country's responsibility in the attack at Tiguentourine (In Amenas). “The attack on this site is only a highly instructive pretext” to disguise the “passivity”, or better still the disintegration of Algerian diplomacy, the Algerian daily newspaper Le Soir d'Alger reports.
According to the newspaper, the former diplomat, who has just got behind a rival candidate to the current head of state, believes that the event “translated the great diplomatic reflux which was paid for in cash in the circumstances”. The diplomatic “machine” was, according to Benattallah, quoted by the newspaper, “voiceless, paralysed, passive”. The diplomatic machinery received only “a few gobbets of information, whilst the embassies concerned by their nationals in danger received information at first hand on the unfolding of events”, said Benattallah. Amongst the shortcomings, he referred to the Sahara dossier. “Algeria lost the initiative by sticking to an attitude which earned it a terrifying cascade of withdrawals of recognition”. (FB)