U.S. pushes Algeria to support Mali intervention

ALGIERS — The United States joined France in a diplomatic lobbying campaign Monday to win key Algerian support for an emergency military intervention in northern Mali, where al Qaeda-linked militants are waging a terror campaign that the Obama administration warns could threaten other nations.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was seeking agreement from Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the start of an unrelated diplomatic trip to the Balkans. France’s President Francois Hollande is expected to visit Algeria in December, with a goal of finalizing regional support for a military mission early next year.

A proposed international force to confront the militants is considered impossible without Algerian support. But Algeria has been reluctant to agree to the creation of such a coalition, whose troops could push extremists out of Mali and back across its own borders.

“They’re beginning to warm to the idea, to talk through how it might work,” one State Department offi- cial said ahead of Clinton’s meetings.

Algeria is the strongest country in the North African region known as the Sahel, with unmatched military and intelligence resources. Many of the Islamist militant groups in the region originated in Algeria, where secular government forces fought Islamic militias in a civil war in the 1990s.

The spreading terror campaign and humanitarian crisis in Mali has drawn unusual attention in Washington over the last month. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney mentioned the Mali conflict at the start of last week’s foreign policy debate with U.S. President Barack Obama, and several Cabinet officials are involved in planning for an African intervention force.

Officials have linked a group called al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to the attack at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last month. AQIM’s leaders are based in northern Mali, where they seized territory following a military coup that shattered Mali’s government last spring.

Many Western powers fear the Sahara desert nation could become like Afghanistan before the 2001 terrorist attacks — a base for radical Islamic fighters to train, impose hard-line Islamic law and plot terror attacks in the region or beyond. The Islamists in Mali have access to a flood of weapons from bordering Libya.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week that the Pentagon is working with allies on a plan to deal with al Qaeda-linked militants in Mali and elsewhere in the North Africa region, with U.S. assistance likely to center on intelligence and logistical support.

No U.S. soldiers are expected to directly participate in ground combat. There are now about a dozen members of a U.S. military team in Mali as part of the normal embassy staff and security.

The Obama administration is contemplating broad military, political and humanitarian intervention in Mali, using the model of the largely successful stabilization effort in Somalia. Since 2007, the United States has spent more than $550 million to help train and supply an African proxy force of about 18,000 soldiers in Somalia, which has brought a measure of order to Somalia for the first time in two decades.

Senior U.S. defense and diplomatic officials were in Paris for planning talks about the Mali force last week. France, the former colonial power in the region, has been the leader in rallying U.S. and European support for what is being called a stabilization or intervention force. The combat force would be made up of Malian soldiers and a large contingent from other African nations.

Algeria has a long, porous border with Mali and a shared internal ethnic conflict with the Tuareg minority.

Algeria initially opposed the international force as unnecessary, but has since said that while mediation talks are the best solution, Algeria would not automatically reject a military intervention. The Algerian military has dealt with the same militant leaders, many of whom are Algerian, for decades.

Clinton’s visit to the Algerian capital is an acknowledgment that despite long counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States, Algeria remains wary of a campaign that could stir unrest among the approximately 50,000 Tuaregs in Algeria.