Intervention the only option in Algeria
By Ian Black

LONDON: Europe is awakening late to this terrible story. Babies with their throats cut, women raped, entire families massacred by bands of men communicating matter-of-factly by walkie-talkie as they go about their grisly work - all these have become the daily fare of a country just a brief flight from Marseilles.Algeria's agony was certainly on British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's mind in Washington on Thursday as he advertised his country's presidency of the European Union.

But the foreign secretary then goes off to China and Hong Kong and it will be his junior minister, Derek Fatchett, who visits Algiers next week to discuss what Europeans can do about the carnage in their own backyard.

Back in 1992, when Algeria's military-led regime cancelled elections its Islamic activist enemies had been poised to win, governments and oil companies breathed a sigh of relief. Algeria's generals said that free polls meant one man, one vote - once. And with them in charge vital energy exports could - and did - continue.

However, outrage and revulsion at 1,000 killings over the past fortnight now need to be translated into action. Britain has worried less about Algeria than most of its EU partners. Yet in an increasingly borderless Europe no one can be complacent about boatpeople washing up on the Cote d'Azur. Occupying the hot seat of the EU's rotating presidency means that it is Cook's problem, one of clear self-interest as well as morality.

Ructions over the EU mission - speedily upgraded to replace officials by ministers - were entirely in the spirit of Algeria's deeply ingrained hostility to foreign involvement. The Algerian government says no one can tell them how to deal with the militants of the Armed Islamic Group who, they routinely charge, are supported from EU member states who can afford to be more relaxed about militant activists. President Liamine Zeroual and his men are no more tolerant of the outlawed Islamic Salvation Front - FIS - after it declared a unilateral ceasefire last autumn than they were before. Yet there is now enough ambiguity about the situation to undermine the official Algerian line. Reports of killings near army camps - suggesting that security forces are turning a blind eye to massacres, have infiltrated rebel groups, masquerading as them, or arming militias to terrorize Islamic activist supporters - have accumulated to the point where even France, the meekest of Algeria's critics, is demanding to know more about what is happening.

And there is an even blunter point: if a sovereign government is so spectacularly unable to look after its own people, surely others have a duty not to simply look the other way? As Cook pointed out last week, of all human rights the most important is the right to live. International agreements which lawyers and diplomats are well paid to draft and implement mean something can be done.

Europe has wrung its hands about Algeria before and achieved nothing. Some say it is being too timid now by refusing to demand a fully-fledged investigation. Yet the EU clearly cannot act without cooperation. Just getting Fatchett and his fellow ministers to Algiers sends a useful message of concern. Once there they should talk about the tricks that Mary Robinson, the highly-regarded United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has up her sleeve: she has been urging Algeria to allow visits by two special rapporteurs, one looking at extra-judicial executions, the other at torture.

Algeria insists it wants support in combating terror: Europe should offer to do exactly that - but in ways it believes will help: investigating alleged abuses, providing observers, helping bring the perpetrators of terrible crimes to justice - and by convincing understandably suspicious generals that dialogue with enemies does not mean surrender to violence.

Stronger condemnation of militancy by FIS could help Europeans persuade Algeria to open lines to opposition parties and human rights groups.What Europe needs to do is get across the idea that assistance is not interference but genuine help to human beings in an hour of terrible need. Algeria's leaders will not be easily convinced. But there is no excuse for not trying.-Dawn/The Guardian News Service.