EU ministers are to pay their first visit to Algeria today for a 24hour fact-finding mission as Algeria presses for co-operation in the fight against terrorism.
The visit was prompted by European shock at a wave of massacres which, according to press reports, left more than 1,500 people dead since Ramadan started on December 30th.
Algeria, which puts the toll at 254, has set strict guidelines for the visit, ruling out any talk of humanitarian aid, suggestions of national political dialogue or an inquiry commission into the massacres. "No inquiry or investigation would be acceptable to us," the Algerian Foreign Minister, Mr Ahmed Attaf, said, "because the truth is known."
If Europe wants to help, it should make it a priority to dismantle the militant networks - representing the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) - operating on European soil, Algeria has said.
The European countries have stepped carefully since the visit almost aborted over the "too modest" level of the EU delegation initially designated.
The British junior Foreign Minister, Mr Derek Fatchett; Austria's Deputy Foreign Minister, Ms Benita Ferrero-Waldner; and their Luxembourg counterpart, Mr Georges Wohlfart, will arrive in Algiers this afternoon, accompanied by the Vice-President of the European Commission, Mr Manuel Marin.
The German Foreign Minister, Mr Klaus Kinkel, again raised the issue of humanitarian aid yesterday, saying in the Bild daily that the EU and Algiers needed to find ways to provide immediate assistance - tents, blankets and food - to refugees from the massacres.
Ms Ferrero-Waldner, meanwhile, said the visit would help start a "process of dialogue", while Algerian officials said the visit was part of the normal "political dialogue" with the EU.
The question to be addressed was "if and how" the EU can help Algeria combat terrorism, said the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook.
Well over 60,000 have died violently in Algeria since the military in 1992 cancelled elections that the now-banned FIS was set to win.
The EU envoys are to meet the Foreign Minister, Mr Ahmed Attaf, and other ministers as well as opposition legislators and newspaper editors. No announcement has been made of a meeting with President Zeroual, but a meeting with the Algerian Defence Minister is "possible but not yet confirmed", according to a British spokesman.
Neither is it clear if the EU officials will travel to any of the sites of recent massacres. At the end of last week, the British Ambassador, Mr Francis Gordon, and the US Ambassador, Mr Cameron Hume, visited Sidi Hammed, outside Algiers, where the government says more than 100 civilians were massacred earlier in the week.
Richard Balls reports:
An Irish lobby group, which gathered outside the Department of Foreign Affairs on Saturday and marched around St Stephen's Green, urged the Government and its EU partners to begin an international investigation into the recent killings.
"We want to express solidarity with the Algerian people. We are looking for an investigation into the mass murders and want the perpetrators to be brought to justice. We want Mr Andrews [the Minister for Foreign Affairs] to lead in that," said the rally organiser, Mr Brendan Butler.
"Sixty per cent of all exports from Algeria go to Europe and about 65 per cent of imports into Algeria are from the EU. The EU has muscle and it should be using it."
Mr Butler, a veteran campaigner for human rights in El Salvador since 1979, took up the cause of Algeria after hearing of the massacres.