Algeria - Profile - Ahmed Ouyahia.

Now aged 47, Ouyahia became prime minister on Dec. 31, 1995, to succeed Mokdad Sifi. His appointment was an attempt by Zeroual to make sure the president remained in control of decision making. Ouyahia formed another government on June 25, 1997, in partnership with a revived National Liberation Front (FLN), a socialist grouping which until the late 1980s used to be the ruling party in Algeria, and the moderate Movement for a Peaceful Society of Shaikh Mahfoud Nahnah. Ouyahia resigned on Dec. 14, 1998, to concentrate on RND politics and the presidential elections. He was succeeded as premier by Ismail Hamdani, whose cabinet on Dec. 19 only had a few changes from the previous one. In late January 1999, Ouyahia was elected as RND secretary general by more than two- thirds of the party's 251-member council, succeeding Mohammed Tahar Benbaiche who had been sacked a few days earlier. RND has since struck a closer alliance with FLN and backed FLN's candidate for the April presidential elections Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Bouteflika, a long- serving foreign minister and top FLN official under president Huari Boumedienne (who ruled Algeria for much of the post-independence era till his death in 1978), is also the preferred candidate of the military. He returned to Algiers recently after having lived in Geneva since 1978 and acted as a consultant to some Gulf states - including the UAE. Ouyahia is a skilled negotiator from Tizi Ouzou in the Berber Kabylie region. He was Algeria's representative to the UN in 1984-1989. He headed the Algerian mediation team which sealed a peace pact between the Mali government and Tuareg rebels in April 1992. He became ambassador to Mali in September 1992 and served in that post for a year. He was secretary of state for co-operation and Maghreb affairs in 1993, in the government of Redha Malek, before becoming director of President Zeroual's office in February 1994. He is married and has two children.