By Hamid Ould Ahmed
Algiers - Algerian authorities sought on Monday to calm public fears about the president's health a week after he underwent surgery for a stomach ulcer in France, saying he was well but without stating when he would come home.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika's personal representative issued a statement on the health of the 68-year-old president after the influential El Watan newspaper printed a frontpage article stating simply that Algerians wanted to know when their head of state would be back among them.
Bouteflika "is in good health and will return home to continue his work at the end of his convalescence," Abdelaziz Belkhadem, the head of state's representative at the presidency of the North African oil-exporting nation, told the official APS news agency.
The agency said Belkhadem denied "all tendentious rumours concerning the health of President Bouteflika," who was flown to France on November 26 and admitted to Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris for medical tests.
Since an official bulletin announcing Bouteflika's surgery was issued a week ago, rumours have been circulating in Algiers and ordinary Algerians have begun to ask whether the president's condition might be more serious than publicly acknowledged.
"Seventeen days after the admission of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika ... concerns are deepening," El Watan said on Monday, adding that it was officially only a question of time when the president would return but that only one medical bulletin had been issued a week ago.
El Watan noted that French authorities and the hospital were also failing to provide information.
APS published the medical bulletin last Monday reporting that Bouteflika, whose country has emerged from more than a decade of civil war involving Islamic militants in which 150 000 people have been killed, had undergone successful surgery for a stomach ulcer.
It did not say when the operation took place.
Bouteflika, who was reelected last year for a second five-year term, had first been taken to an Algiers hospital suffering from gastro-intestinal bleeding before being flown to France.
El Watan first criticised authorities in the days after Bouteflika's entry to hospital, accusing them of being "wrapped in silence".
Even before last week's medical bulletin, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia told state radio the head of state was having "a few days of perfectly normal convalescence."
After Bouteflika's illness, it emerged for the first time that Algeria's powerful interior minister, who disappeared from public view two months ago, had undergone a kidney operation.
Noureddine Zerhouni, who has played a pivotal role in combating al-Qaeda-linked Islamic militants in Algeria, left hospital several weeks ago and was being regularly informed about ministerial affairs, APS reported earlier this month.