Last update - 00:00 09/02/2008
Mauritanian Pres.: Attack on Israeli Embassy won't harm ties
By Reuters
NOUAKCHOTT - Mauritania's President Sidi Mohamed Cheikh Ould Abdallahi said Saturday in an interview that a shooting attack on the Israeli embassy last week, which left three bystanders wounded, would not disrupt ties between Mauritania and Israel.
Mauritania is one of only three Arab League member countries to have diplomatic ties with Israel.
Pressure has been mounting on the president to sever relations with Israel following popular protests over a blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip. In late January, political parties called on him to break off relations.
Abdallahi said the February 1 shooting at the Israeli embassy would not change his position.
"There've been acts like this in Mauritania long before the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Those who commit them belong to Salafist groups present in countries where there is no Israeli embassy," Abdallahi said. "Some people have tried to link the attack to our relations with Israel. We are dedicated to neutralizing them by all means."
Abdallahi also said that there was no terrorist organization in his country and that the three attacks by suspected Islamic militants in recent weeks were the work of a small group of foreign-trained individuals.
The embassy attack followed the shooting of four French tourists by suspected Islamic militants on Dec. 24 and the killing of three soldiers days later in an ambush on a desert outpost claimed by al Qaida's North African branch.
The attacks prompted the cancellation of the Dakar rally across the Sahara for the first time in its history, amid fears al Qaida was expanding its operations into Mauritania from neighboring Algeria and northern Mali.
"There is no structured terrorist organization implanted in this country. There are no operating zones for these terrorist structures," Abdallahi said. "There are just a few wretches who have acted recently at a time of great media interest."
Fears of a possible spread of al Qaida to Mauritania have prompted both the United States and former colonial power France to expand security cooperation with the West African state.
Abdallahi won power a year ago in elections hailed as a democratic example to the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa, after a transition in the wake of a bloodless 2005 coup which toppled former dictator Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya.
Abdallahi's government made some progress on social reforms, welcoming back black Africans exiled under Taya's Arab-dominated rule and imposing harsh penalties for slavery, which still persists in the West African state of 3 million people.
But the opposition and media have criticized disarray in Mauritania's once-formidable security services and accused Abdallahi of encouraging Islamists by legalizing their party and naming an imam from the conservative Salafist school of Islam as his minister for Islamic affairs.
Two of the main suspects arrested for the killing of the French tourists had previously been detained by police for links to Algeria's militant Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which renamed itself Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb a year ago.
"Our security services have a very good knowledge of the individuals involved in these extremist and terrorist acts," Abdallahi said. "I think they're well equipped to find them and block the development of these structures."
"The people who committed these attacks have all been outside the country. That means there is no terrorist training cell here. These are people recruited by a foreign movement."
The suspected ringleader, Sidi Ould Sidna, was among 24 suspects acquitted of being trained by the GSPC last year. After the December 24 shootings, he was tracked by French intelligence to Guinea-Bissau and was among five suspects arrested there.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Mauritania on Friday that Paris would step up its security cooperation with Nouakchott, and he praised Abdallahi's decision to maintain diplomatic ties with Israel.
Related articles: