Cairo - Lakhdar Brahimi, the veteran
diplomat who is expected to steer Algeria's political transition
after mass protests, has won respect from foreign leaders and
his country's political elite during his long career.
But his appointment may not go down well with protesters
demanding rapid change. At 85, he is three years older than
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and from the same generation that
has presided over Algerian politics since the 1954-62 war of
independence against France.
Bouteflika yielded to the protests on Monday by postponing
elections and dropping plans to stand for a fifth term. Brahimi
is now likely to chair a conference planning Algeria's future, a
government source said.
A former foreign minister, Brahimi has carried out
troubleshooting missions for the United Nations across several
regions and mediated on some of the Middle East's thorniest
conflicts.
Though not directly or publicly involved in national
politics, he is a heavyweight of Algeria's establishment, long
viewed as a possible presidential candidate. He is close to
Bouteflika.
"The voice of the people has been heard," Brahimi said on
state television after Bouteflika's announcement that he would
not seek a new term.
"Young people who took to the streets acted responsibly and
gave a good image of the country. We must turn this crisis into
a constructive process."
Bouteflika has said his own final act will be to usher in a
new system that will be in "the hands of a new generation of
Algerians".
The "inclusive and independent" national conference that
Brahimi is expected to head is tasked with drafting a new
constitution and setting a date for elections by the end of
2019.
It is likely to include prominent war veterans as well as
representatives of the protest movement which has brought tens
of thousands of people on to the streets since last month,
political sources said.
The plan may struggle to win support, however. Large crowds
turned out again in cities across Algeria on Tuesday, protesting
against the extension of Bouteflika's term and calling for
faster change.
"GREAT FRIENDSHIP FOR" BOUTEFLIKA
Educated in Algeria and France, Brahimi launched his career
during the independence war, representing the National
Liberation Front (FLN) in Southeast Asia while Bouteflika and
other future leaders joined the FLN on the home front.
A career in the foreign service followed, including
ambassadorial roles in the 1960s and 70s during Algeria's
post-independence diplomatic heyday, when a youthful Bouteflika
was foreign minister.
Brahimi was foreign minister himself from 1991 to 1993, as
Algeria slid into a civil conflict.
In an interview published in 2010, he said elections that
were cancelled by the army, with the Islamic Salvation Front
(FIS) poised to win, should never have been held, given the
Islamists' strength.
But he said that once the first round was held in December
1991, the second round should have gone ahead too "because what
followed could not have been worse".
Fighting that pitted security forces against an Islamist
insurgency eventually killed as many as 200,000 people, with
Bouteflika overseeing amnesties that drew the conflict towards a
close after he became president in 1999.
From the 1980s, Brahimi served in multinational bodies,
helping mediate an end to Lebanon's civil war for the Arab
League in 1989-91, an experience he described as formative.
He spent six months heading the U.N. observer mission to
South Africa before Nelson Mandela's election as president in
1994, and served twice as U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan,
before and after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. In 2004, he
was special envoy to Iraq.
In what was expected to be his final high-level mission, in
2012 he was named U.N. special envoy for Syria as the war there
worsened, leading negotiations between President Bashar
al-Assad's government and rebels in Switzerland.
Brahimi quit two years later, unable to break intra-Syrian
and international deadlocks. He told the U.N. Security Council:
"I go with a heavy heart because so little was achieved."
In December 2018 Brahimi told Jeune Afrique magazine that he
did not foresee a domestic crisis in Algeria.
"Recently I travelled a little in the interior of the
country and I have the impression that Algeria is doing quite
well," he said, citing infrastructure development in his home
region south of Algiers.
He said he did not believe Bouteflika was widely contested,
and that he did not have an opinion on whether the president
should stand again.
"I have great confidence in him and great friendship for
him," he said.
(Editing by Timothy Heritage)