Daily Times

ALGIERS: German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Algeria from Monday to press efforts to get North African countries to reduce the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean into Europe.

Merkel, who last week hosted Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, is hoping for partnerships with Maghreb countries and Egypt to prevent a new wave of migrants making the dangerous sea crossing to the EU.

Merkel arrives in Algiers at 1700 GMT before holding meetings with Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and, on Tuesday, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Algeria is a key actor in seeking to stabilise neighbouring Libya, which has lacked a functioning government since the 2011 overthrow of Moamer Kadhafi and has become the main gateway for African migrants bound for Italy.

But elsewhere in the region too, desperate people, many from sub-Saharan Africa, are trying to cross into the EU — an influx the 28-nation bloc fears will rise again with the onset of warmer weather in spring. Some 300 migrants Monday stormed the double wire fence between Morocco and the Spanish North African territory of Ceuta, after nearly 500 made it over on Friday, one of the largest groups in more than a decade.

Merkel’s North Africa diplomacy comes after she spearheaded a controversial EU deal with Ankara a year ago that helped sharply reduce the influx of migrants who passed through Turkey and western Balkan countries into the bloc.

Merkel, confronted with the rise of the anti-immigration AfD party ahead of elections in September, has been under intense pressure to reduce the number of asylum seekers in Germany, which has taken in over one million migrants and refugees since 2015. Public fears have been heightened by a number of jihadist attacks last year, especially the Berlin Christmas market truck rampage in December that claimed 12 lives, blamed on Tunisian rejected asylum seeker Anis Amri.