A delegation of TDs is to visit Algeria on a fact finding mission on the invitation of the Algerian ambassador to Britain and Ireland, Fine Gael's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Gay Mitchell, announced yesterday.
Mr Mitchell, who is also chairman of the Oireachtas sub-committee on human rights, said he had a "frank and to the point" meeting in London with the ambassador, Mr Ahmed Benyamina. The date of the visit or the delegation's composition is not yet decided.
Mr Benyamina also agreed to address an Oireachtas committee on the situation in Algeria.
Mr Mitchell said he had told the ambassador "of the Irish parliament's demand for a war crimes tribunal to be established immediately and of our wish for an independent international investigation into the Algerian atrocities.
More than 80,000 men, women and children have died to date in Algeria, mostly in savagely violent attacks, and over a thousand of these murders have taken place since Christmas.
"We have an international obligation to do all we can to stop these heinous murders", Mr Mitchell said.
Meanwhile, the EU yesterday urged Algeria to open its doors to international help to combat the terrorism that has claimed up to 80,000 lives in six years of civil conflict.
The foreign ministers called "for greater transparency on the part of the government of Algeria about the situation in which terrorist groups continue to perpetrate cowardly and brutal attacks on innocent civilians".
In a draft communique to Algiers they urged Algeria to reconsider its rejection of outside help and urged it to give access to UN representatives and the media. Algeria has not allowed any external visits to sites of alleged atrocities.
Noting that dialogue had taken on a "new quality and urgency", the ministers encouraged more frequent contact between the EU and Algiers, through the planned visit to London of the Algerian Foreign Minister, Mr Ahmed Attaf, and through parliamentary exchange trips.
Meeting for the first time under Britain's new EU presidency, the EU ministers endorsed London's "ambitious" policy proposals.
Ministers welcomed the outline agenda put forward by the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, focusing on the EU's planned eastward enlargement and the run-in to economic and monetary union.
Mr Cook said membership talks with the six advanced applicants would open on March 31st.
Mr Cook said the EU would continue to seek talks with Turkey, which has been upset by the decision last month not to include it on a lengthy list of potential new members.
Mr Cook reaffirmed that, although Britain was unlikely to be in the first wave of planned monetary union, it would do all it could to ensure the project's success. The foreign ministers also discussed relations with China, Russia, the US and Iran, as well as the state of the Middle East peace process. They pledged six million Ecus (£7.7 million) to help the newly-elected moderate Prime Minister of the Serb Republic, Mr Milorad Dodik, get up and running and make the Dayton peace accord work.