ALGIERS - Algerian Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Belkhadem has been elected secretary general of the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) at the party's eighth congress, participants said Wednesday.
The decision to choose the prominent diplomat by a new FLN executive of 121 members, themselves elected by the FLN national council, came as no surprise when it was announced late Tuesday, delegates said.
The FLN until the 1980s was the sole ruling party in the north African country after it led a liberation war to win independence from France in 1962, but has been overhauled several times since. The new executive replaces what used to be a central committee.
On Monday, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was made chairman of the FLN, a role he accepted the following day in a speech as an "honorary one."
The congress, which ended in the early hours of Wednesday morning, expressed support for a national reconciliation policy Bouteflika introduced at the turn of the century in a bid to end a Muslim fundamentalist insurgency which has claimed 150,000 lives, according to unofficial tolls, since 1992.
Last year and last month, the intelligence and security forces announced that most of the insurgent forces have been reduced to virtually nothing by the military.
Security services and newspapers on Wednesday reported the killing or capture of eight more guerrillas in further military operations.
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