Algeria has changed its mind and will receive a European Union mission to discuss recent massacres, the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, announced yesterday.
Algeria, which on Wednesday rejected as too low-level a proposed visit by EU political directors, reversed its position after the EU agreed to send a team of three junior ministers instead.
Mr Cook said in a statement that the mission would pay its visit next week. It will then report to a meeting of EU foreign ministers on January 26th.
Britain, which holds the EU's six-month rotating EU presidency until June 30th, is sending a the junior foreign minister Mr Derek Fatchett.
But diplomats and regional experts said in the short term there was little the EU could do to stop the killings that have left more than 1,000 dead in recent weeks. "This is purely cosmetic. The mission will go in, come back, make a statement to the EU ministers which the Algerians will then reject," said one Middle East expert.
Mr George Joffe, deputy director of the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, said all the EU could really do was continue to focus attention on the killings.
"Applying sanctions is unrealistic because the EU gets 20 per cent of its natural gas from Algeria. They could limit air links, but they won't, because the Algerians would react very badly," he said.
Patrick Smyth adds:
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, yesterday strongly welcomed the agreement between the EU and the Algerian government to a ministerial mission. Ireland has argued from the start for the need for ministerial involvement in a delegation.
Mr Andrews was speaking from Lisbon, where he yesterday met his Portuguese counterpart to discuss a common approach to the EU's Agenda 2000 reform process, particularly common concern about the continuity of structural funding in regions like Ireland which now exceed maximum funding thresholds.
They also discussed East Timor, a matter of particular concern to Portugal, the former colonial power. Diplomatic sources last night suggested that Dublin may have been offered as a venue for dialogue between the Indonesian government and East Timorese resistance.