Editing Abdelaziz Bouteflika (section)

=== Foreign policy ===
{{further|Foreign relations of Algeria }}
[[File:Mohammad Khatami and Abdelaziz Bouteflika- October 19, 2003.png|left|thumb|272x272px|[[Mohammad Khatami]] and Abdelaziz Bouteflika in October 2003]]
Bouteflika presided over the Organisation of African Unity in 2000, secured the Algiers Peace Treaty between [[Eritrea]] and [[Ethiopia]], and supported peace efforts in the African Great Lakes region. He also secured a friendship treaty with nearby Spain in 2002, and welcomed president Jacques Chirac of France on a state visit to Algiers in 2003.

Algeria has been particularly active in African relations, and in mending ties with the West, as well as trying to some extent to resurrect its role in the declining non-Aligned movement. However, it has played a more limited role in Arab politics, its other traditional sphere of interest. Relations with the Kingdom of Morocco remained quite tense, with diplomatic clashes on the issue of the [[Western Sahara]], despite some expectations of a thaw in 1999, which was also the year of [[King Mohamed VI]]'s accession to the throne in Morocco.