Algiers, Algeria – Thousands of Algerians have staged fresh protests after President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s offer not to serve a full term in next month’s elections failed to appease public anger against his bid to seek a fifth term in office.

In a letter read out on state-run TV on Sunday, shortly after the 82-year-old’s campaign manager formalised his candidacy, the ailing leader vowed to organise an inclusive national conference that would set a date and prepare for new polls which he would not contest.

In the statement, which came in response to an unprecedented mass protest movement against his 20-year rule, Bouteflika also pledged to improve the redistribution of the oil-producing country’s wealth and create better economic opportunities for Algerians.

The promises, however, did little to quell the protesters’ frustration.

Late on Sunday, hundreds of young people gathered in Algiers’ Audin Square, chanting slogans denouncing Bouteflika’s candidacy.

Thousands more staged new anti-government protests on Monday in the capital and other cities, including Oran, Constantine and Bouira, according to witnesses and local TV footage.

“These demonstrations showed that the Algerian population is not naive. We do not believe President Bouteflika when he says that he is ready to step down in the near future. It is a new manoeuvre of the regime to find a way to buy time,” Reda Boudraa, deputy leader of Rally for Democracy and Culture (RDC), a secular opposition party, told Al Jazeera.

“What is interesting with his message is that he is acknowledging that something new is happening with these protests and that his regime can no longer survive without any change,” he added.

Protests first broke out on February 22, about two weeks after Bouteflika confirmed in a letter carried by the official APS news agency that he would run in the April 18 presidential elections.

The president, who has used a wheelchair since suffering a stroke in 2013, last week travelled to Switzerland for medical tests. His exact whereabouts are currently unknown.

With anti-Bouteflika rallies expected to continue throughout the week across Algeria, many expressed doubts that the president was sincerely willing to handle a democratic transition if he won the polls.

“Bouteflika’s determination to run again despite his fragile health and widespread protestations is a political suicide,” said Walid Hadjadj, a member of Young Generation, another secular opposition party.

“He had the chance to leave power without violence. Now, the regime will be toppled by the people mobilisation. His attitude reminds me of [Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali‘s attempt to stay in power,” he told Al Jazeera, referring to Tunisia’s long-time ruler who was overthrown in a 2011 uprising sparked by anger at poverty and unemployment.

Bouteflika’s offer has been heavily criticised by several opposition parties, some of which are calling for a boycott of the upcoming vote.

“We will not take part in the election if Abdelaziz Bouteflika runs for a fifth term because we have already noticed multiple fraud activities,” Abdelaziz Belaid, founder of the opposition Front El Moustabal party said on Monday, two days after registering his own candidacy.

On Monday, Ali Benflis, Bouteflika’s main opponent during the 2004 and 2014 presidential elections, described Bouteflika’s offer as an “unspeakable additional provocation”.

Benflis, who has withdrawn from the presidential race to protest against Bouteflika’s fifth-term bid, said the “Algerian people were expecting an unambiguous response but, instead, they heard the same unfulfilled old promises.”

Two other main opposition parties, the Labour Party and the Islamist Movement Society for Peace, have also decided to boycott the polls.

In a speech at her party’s headquarters in Algiers on Friday, Labour leader Louisa Hanoune said that “this electoral process represents a danger for the country’s national security. We need to help this administration to leave the power for the country’s best interest”.

A ‘fair deal’?

But others, including Ilies Berdiche, a member of Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia‘s National and Democratic Rally (RND) party, described Bouteflika’s proposal on Sunday as “a fair deal”.

“It will give enough time to opposition parties and civil society organisations to be ready for a major political transition,” Berdiche, who will volunteer for Bouteflika’s election campaign for a fifth term, told Al Jazeera.

“Bouteflika’s offer is consistent with the letter he sent in February when he announced his intention to run for a fifth term,” he said.

“At that time, he had already called for the establishment of an inclusive and national conference to organise a peaceful transition. Everybody, including the Bouteflika administration, agrees that the time has come for wide-ranging reforms.”

Likewise, Djaoudia, a business management student backed Bouteflika’s proposal as a peaceful way out of the political turmoil.

“I don’t want the electoral process to be cancelled,” Djaoudia told Al Jazeera. “This will ensure a soft exit out of the crisis. I agree that political transition is needed but it will require time. Bouteflika’s offer will guarantee the success of a political transition.”

Others, however, disagreed.

“Bouteflika is not in shape to organise a political transition,” Amina, a 30-year-old paediatrician, said.

“He must leave now. Besides, he lied to the population when he said that his fourth term would be the last one. How can we trust him now when he promises to step down if he wins the vote in April?”

Image: HALEY HAMBLIN / MASHABLE

Saudi Arabia has ruled out reopening the kingdom’s embassy in Syria, saying it is “too early” to restore diplomatic ties with President Bashar al-Assad‘s government.

The comments were made on Monday by Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir, who also said Saudi authorities would not take part in any reconstruction efforts in Syria without progress on a political process to end the country’s eight-year-old war.

“The kingdom has always been keen on the integrity of the Syrian territory and the political solution,” al-Jubeir told a joint press conference with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

“[And] the reopening of the embassy is related to the progress of the political process,” he added.

Riyadh closed its embassy in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and pulled out its diplomats and staff in March 2012.

Minister @AdelAljubeir: “We agreed on the importance of reaching a political solution, based on Security Council Resolution 2254, and are very keen on the unity and sovereignty of #Syria and the success of the political process.” pic.twitter.com/vj3uYNRgzN

— Foreign Ministry (@KSAmofaEN) March 4, 2019

Al-Jubeir also said Riyadh, which backed rebels fighting Assad, was against reinstating Syria to the Arab League for now.

Syria was suspended from the pan-Arab body in 2011 and slapped with sanctions following Assad’s brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.

The unrest escalated into the country’s ongoing civil war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million others, according to the United Nations.

Assad has since recovered control of most of Syria with support from Russia, Iran and Tehran-backed groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), meanwhile, have backed armed groups opposed to Assad during the war.

In December last year, Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir became the first Arab League leader to visit Damascus since the war in Syria began.

Shortly afterwards, the UAE, a Saudi ally, reopened its embassy in Damascus in December in a bid to re-engage with Assad and rebuild its influence in Syria as a means of heading off regional interference in “Arab affairs”.

But the United States is lobbying other Gulf states to hold off on rehabilitating Syria, the Reuters news agency reported last month, citing five sources familiar with the process.

Fresh EU sanctions on Damascus

The European Union also stepped up pressure on Damascus on Monday, adding Syria’s interior minister and six other ministers, including the portfolio holders for tourism, education and communications and technology, to a sanctions blacklist for their role in Assad’s “violent repression” of civilians.

The European Council, which includes the heads of state or government of the 28 EU member states, said in a statement those sanctioned were barred from travelling to Europe and would see their assets frozen.

Including the seven newly added individuals, there are now 277 people under EU sanctions for their role in the repression of civilians in Syria and their links to Assad.

Brussels has also frozen the assets of some 72 entities, while other sanctions include an embargo on Syrian oil and a freeze on the country’s central bank assets within the bloc.

“The EU will continue to consider further restrictive measures against Syria as long as the repression continues,” the European Council statement said.

Germany‘s coalition government says it will introduce legislation that will allow authorities to strip people with dual nationality of their German citizenship if they fight for a foreign armed group. 

The proposed rule will apply to people over 18 and, for reasons of constitutional law, only to future cases, a spokeswoman for the interior ministry said on Monday.

“There are plans to introduce a legal amendment, for Germans with multiple nationalities who fight for a terror militia, to lose their German citizenship,” said Eleonore Petermann.

The move comes as Germany and other European countries consider what to do about citizens who fought for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group and were captured in Syria.

More than 900 people from Germany left the country to join armed groups in Syria and Iraq, according to a 2017 report by the Soufan Group, a New York-based security consultancy. About a third have returned home.

There are more than 1,000 ISIL prisoners from Europe in detention facilities overseen by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces in eastern Syria. 

Washington has urged its European allies to repatriate the fighters, but Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas previously said German ISIL prisoners could only “return if it is ensured they can immediately be taken into custody”.  

Still, the fact that the planned legislation cannot be applied retroactively means the proposal is unlikely to ease the German government’s dilemma on how to handle former fighters. 

Berlin hopes the legislation will have a “preventive effect” and discourage citizens from joining armed groups.

Officials said the proposals would be drawn up soon but did not offer a precise timetable.

German law already allows for people with dual citizenship to be stripped of their German nationality if they volunteer for their other country’s armed forces without the consent of authorities in Germany.

The planned amendment would add participation in combat for a foreign armed group to the existing law.

Meanwhile, Steffen Seibert, spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel, rejected claims that the amendment would leave dual nationals feeling like “second-class citizens”.    

“We must not forget what this is about,” he said. 

“This is about concrete participation in combat operations for a terror militia abroad,” he said.

Merkel’s government had committed to examining such an amendment during their coalition negotiations last year, he noted.

Bernd Baumann, a politician with the opposition far-right Alternative for Germany party, said the proposed legislation came “much too late” and would not help with ISIL fighters returning from Syria and Iraq.

Stephan Thomae, a politician with the opposition Free Democrats, described the plan as “pure display window politics” and said the government should concentrate on taking a clear position on how to deal with captured ISIL fighters.

Other countries have made similar moves.

Neighbouring France has had a process since the 1990s for stripping French citizenship from dual nationals who carry out “acts of terrorism”, though it has rarely been used.

Britain recently sparked controversy when it decided to strip a teenage girl who left to join ISIL in Syria of her nationality, arguing that she could obtain Bangladeshi citizenship through her mother, a claim the government in Dhaka has rejected.