Mrs Mary Robinson didn't know what she was talking about, the Algerian Foreign Minister said. "She thought the problem in Algeria was a human rights problem." How naive of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr Ahmed Attaf seemed to be saying, recalling his tense meeting with the former Irish president in New York on September 29th.
In a country where thousands of people have disappeared without trace after being picked up by security forces, where torture is systematic, where elections are rigged and the press is censored, you might think Mrs Robinson had a point.
But no, Mr Attaf assured us. "I told her the problem was one of terrorism. When she said she was concerned not by terrorism but its causes, I told her `what causes can justify killing women and children?' "
It is a familiar argument here: the terror wreaked by the government on its opponents cannot be compared to the massacres of women and children apparently committed by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). On this sliding scale of horror, raping a woman in front of her husband, burning detainees with blow torches or drilling holes into their bodies are mere government "excesses", while the recent orgies of throat slashing in the Algiers suburbs are "terrorism", a scourge which justifies all means used to fight it.
Mr Attaf did not, of course, talk about blow torches and drills. "I thought Mrs Robinson was wrong in her objectives, and I told her this clearly," he said. "Mrs Robinson is a high-ranking UN civil servant. Her mandate requires her to respect the sovereignty of UN member-states." Couldn't she play a role in Algeria's crisis, I asked? "We will continue to report to the specialised commissions of the UN," Mr Attaf answered stiffly.
Should anyone doubt Algeria's human rights record, Mr Attaf reminded us that Algeria is party to 23 international human rights conventions - "including some that even developed western countries have not signed." There were "mechanisms which require Algeria to submit annual reports on human rights to various bodies," Mr Attaf noted. His country had been "rigorous and punctual" in complying with these bureaucratic requirements, and he wanted to "seize the opportunity to praise the quality of co-operation between us and these commissions". Algeria had "no complexes" and was "proud to promote human rights as a fundamental basis of our state".
Mrs Robinson's ignorance about Algeria's problems was only one of Mr Attaf's bugbears. "In some European capitals," he said, clearly alluding to Britain, "even as I speak terrorist groups are selling publications and cassettes with the full knowledge of the authorities. They circulate video cassettes of atrocities, promote murder and make fatwas." Having been expelled from France, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) is active in Britain. The more extreme GIA also issues statements in London.
Algeria's civil war began in 1992 when the military regime cancelled elections won by the FIS and outlawed the party. The FIS has called for a boycott of today's nationwide local elections, an appeal which Mr Attaf dismissed as "not worthy of comment".
"This dissolved party bears primary responsibility for the tragedy we are living through," he said. "It has no role to play in our country".
With that uniquely Algerian flair for empty verbosity - the dual heritage of French colonialism and decades of alliance with the former Soviet Union - Mr Attaf hailed today's poll as "the ultimate phase in the completion of the institutional edifice of Algeria".
It is form, not substance, which matters to the regime here. Yesterday's newspapers - which cannot be accused of supporting the rebels - announced the poll with headlines like: "Risk of Electoral Fraud" and "Can Fraud be Avoided?"