ALGIERS – Tuesday, 31 October 2023 (APS) – Minister of Foreign Affairs and National Community Abroad Ahmed Attaf received Monday the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General and Head of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS) Leonardo Santos Simao, who is on a visit to Algeria, the ministry said in a statement.
The meeting enabled an exchange of viewpoints on the new developments in the Sahel region, notably the crises in Mali and Niger as well as prospects to find and develop political solutions to these crises, said the source.
In a statement to the press following the audience, Santos Simao said that the meeting enabled underlining “the importance of working for effective ways to fight against terrorism,” adding that “terrorism is expanding in the region, hence the need to work together to arrest this expansion which hinders the development of the region’s countries.”
“There is a continuous link between terrorism and poverty, and to stop terrorism, poverty must be eliminated first,” he added, stressing that “terrorism will not win in our region.”