Algeria’s 1st President Back From Exile, Supports Iraq

Ahmed Ben Bella, Algeria’s independence leader and first president, ended a decade of exile Thursday, demanding the ouster of the Algerian government and urging followers to fight on behalf of Iraq.

Tens of thousands of Algerians lined the waterfront to greet him after an overnight ferry voyage from Spain. Posters of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein fluttered alongside portraits of Ben Bella.

“Iraq needs support,” Ben Bella, 73, said in an hourlong speech after coming ashore. “Telephone the Iraqis, send telegrams and tell them you are with them. Go by the hundreds of thousands to the Iraqi Embassy and don’t leave until they sign you up as volunteers.”

Ben Bella, who recently flew to Iraq for talks with Hussein, urged supporters to stage a protest at the U.S. Embassy denouncing the American military deployment in the Persian Gulf.

It was Ben Bella’s first time back in Algeria since he voluntarily went into exile in Europe in 1981 after serving 15 years in prison. He became Algeria’s first president in 1962 after an eight-year independence war against France but was overthrown and imprisoned during a 1965 coup led by Col. Houari Boumedienne, the army chief.

A throng of people massed along a seaside boulevard, chanting Ben Bella’s name, as the car ferry Hoggar arrived from Barcelona. Other boats in the harbor blared horns and sirens in welcome.

Ben Bella said he hopes to forge a new political coalition to defeat the long-ruling National Liberation Front, to which he once belonged. Legislative elections are scheduled by the end of March, but Ben Bella said the government should resign immediately.

“The government has no more credibility and thus cannot prepare for the next elections,” he said.

In his rambling address in French and Arabic, Ben Bella hailed radical Arab leaders and their causes.

“Long live Palestine!” he cried. “Long live Iraq! Long live Saddam! Long live Libya! Long live Moammar Kadafi!”

Ben Bella returns home as Islamic fundamentalists stand poised to win legislative elections in six months. With or without them, Ben Bella hopes to forge an alliance of opposition parties.

The former president had disappointed partisans by not returning for local and regional elections June 12, Algeria’s first multiparty balloting since 1962. He had urged a boycott of those elections, claiming they would be rigged by the ruling National Liberation Front.