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                  Algerian PM: President Recovering in France

   by Reuters

   Algeria's prime minister, reacting to reports that President Abdelaziz
   Bouteflika is seriously ill, said the 76-year-old was recovering in
   France but had been ordered to take complete rest by his doctors.

   Since he was rushed to hospital in Paris on April 27 with what was
   officially described as a minor stroke, Bouteflika has been neither
   heard nor seen in public, raising widespread speculation that he is
   seriously ailing.

   France's Le Point magazine said Bouteflika, who was treated for cancer
   in 2005, was in very poor health, with some of his vital functions
   damaged. Algerian newspaper editor Hichem Aboud said he was in a deep
   coma and had been brought back to Algeria.

   Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said that after being treated at the
   Val-de-Grace military hospital in Paris, Bouteflika was convalescing in
   France and continued to follow the affairs of state on a daily basis.

   "The president, whose survival has never been questioned and whose
   health is improving every day, has been required by his doctors to take
   complete rest in order to make a full recovery," the Algerian Press
   Service quoted Sellal as saying.

   French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot also said Bouteflika
   was in France, but declined to give further details, including whether
   he was still at Val-de-Grace hospital.

   Sellal said that false reports by some foreign media on Bouteflika
   threatened Algeria's development and security.

   "The illness of President Bouteflika will soon be no more than a bad
   memory," he said.

   Algeria is due to hold a presidential election in April 2014 and were
   Bouteflika to disappear from the political scene before that,
   authorities would have to scramble to find an alternative candidate and
   the constitutional means of running the country until then.

   Algeria has been run with Soviet-style secrecy for decades by an elite
   drawn largely from men who fought in the war of independence against
   France from 1954 to 1962.

   Bouteflika, who first became president in 1999, is among the last of
   that generation, who retain a tradition of secrecy dating back to their
   fear of betrayal during their time as insurgents.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/algerian-pm-president-recovering-in-france/1665251.html