year-old state of emergency in Algeria will end within days, Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said Monday, brushing off concerns that recent protests in the country could escalate as in Tunisia and Egypt. A state of emergency has been in force in Algeria since 1992 and the government has come under pressure from opponents, inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, to ditch emergency laws. Several hundred protesters took to the streets in the capital Algiers on Saturday and opposition groups said they would demonstrate every weekend until the government is changed. “In the coming days, we will talk about (the state of emergency) as if it was a thing of the past,” Medelci told the French radio station Europe 1 in an interview. “That means that in Algeria we will have a return to a state of law that allows complete freedom of expression, within the limits of the law,” he said. Algeria's foreign minister has dismissed the protest marches in his country as actions by a small minority and not the start of popular uprisings like those in Tunisia or in Egypt that overthrew long-standing Arab rulers. Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci told Europe 1 radio that Saturday's protest march in the capital of Algiers was the work of a minority and that one set for this weekend likely “won't do any better.”
