Abdelaziz Bouteflika

While Morocco's King Mohammed VI and Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika did not manage a bilateral meeting in Paris a new French diplomatic initiative may help to resolve the dispute over Western Sahara which has hobbled North African relations for years...

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika basks in the glow of an unprecedented visit from French President Jacques Chirac welcomed as a hero on 2-4 March after his standoff with the United States over Iraq...

The evolving world order was highlighted by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's three meetings with Bush last year and Libyan efforts to engineer a quiet rapprochement with Washington not least to stop Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi following Iran Iraq and North Korea into the 'Axis of Evil'...

Despite frantic lobbying he has been outmanoeuvred by South African President Thabo Mbeki and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika who head the key NePAD group of Algeria Nigeria Senegal and South Africa...

Gadaffi scored easy populist points by threatening to leave the League of Arab States over Palestine policy in a much publicised late October spat that had League Secretary General Amr Moussa Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika shuttling to Tripoli...

Yet President Abdelaziz Bouteflika can feel more secure than ever since he took power in 1998 rejoicing (despite a low turnout) in the big majority secured by his allies in the former single party the Front de Libération Nationale in the 30 May elections...

NePAD's presidential architects - South Africa's Thabo Mbeki Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade and Algeria's Abdelaziz Bouteflika - want African states to agree first on indices of good and representative governance and second on the structure and membership of an institution to monitor good governance...

The Islamist vote at the legislative elections on 30 May will show whether President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has really transformed Algerian politics...

It was relieved by the late arrival of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo head of NePAD's implementing committee with a tub-thumping show-stealing cameo but Senegal was embarrassed by the non-appearance of NePAD's co-architects Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria and Mohamed Hosni Mubarak of Egypt...

Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika encouraged by Chief of Staff Mohamed Lamari paid an unexpected visit in late February to Polisario camps near Tindouf the first such visit by an Algerian president since the mid-1970s...