ALGERIA'S PRESIDENT QUITS AFTER PARTY DEFEAT

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 12, 1992                   TAG: 9201120115
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
ALGERIA'S PRESIDENT QUITS AFTER PARTY DEFEAT
Algerian President Chadli Benjedid resigned unexpectedly Saturday. After dismantling almost three decades of one-party rule and pledging to lead his nation Benjedid toward democracy, he has now been swept away by the results of his political liberalization.
He stepped down in a dramatic television appearance just 17 days after his party, the National Liberation Front, suffered a humiliating electoral defeat and only four days before the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front seemed poised to win an overwhelming parliamentary majority in a second-round vote.
Abdelmalek Benhabyles, president of a group known as the Constitutional Council, was named head of an interim government, with 45 days to organize an election for a new president.
Following the president's statement on state television, tanks and other armored vehicles took up positions around government buildings, the television and radio stations and telephone exchanges. Troops were deployed around the main government building in a hilly area of central Algiers.
Algerian Premier Sid Ahmed Ghozali said on television Saturday night that he had called on the army, "by way of prevention, to take the necessary measures to protect public security."
Youths gathered around the capital Saturday night, but the streets were calm and no incidents were reported.
In recent days, rumors have circulated that the army, hostile to the fundamentalists, might intervene. Heavy troop movements around the capital have been reported.
The military has been loyal to Bendjedid and sympathetic to his democratic goals. But elements in the army have been pressuring him to thwart a fundamentalist victory.
As the latest leader of the revolutionary and secular movement that won Algeria's independence from France after a bloody war in 1962, Benjedid never made a secret of his opposition to those who want to turn the North African country of 25 million people into an Islamic state.
His resignation sent shock waves through France, where more than a million Algerians live. It also raised new fears of a huge wave of migration to France.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB