Sahara army chiefs meet to draft anti-Qaeda plan

Military chiefs from four Saharan countries met on Sunday to set out a joint strategy for fighting al-Qaeda's north African wing, the group holding seven foreigners hostage in the Sahara desert.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) seized the foreigners, who include five French nationals, in Niger this month in an operation security analysts said showed the group posed a growing threat to security in the resource-rich region.

Chiefs of staff from Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger were meeting in Tamanrasset, southern Algeria, where they have set up a joint headquarters to coordinate the fight against al-Qaeda in the Sahara.

"Military chiefs of staff will exchange information and analysis to establish ... a joint strategy for fighting against terrorism and organised crime," the Algerian defence ministry said in a statement released on Saturday.

The statement did not say, however, if the meeting would deal directly with the issue of the seven hostages.

Algeria has been pressing its neighbours in the Sahara to take a more coordinated approach to tackling al-Qaeda and also to halt the practice of paying ransoms and releasing jailed militants in return for hostages' freedom.

The lack of a unified approach among Saharan and European countries has "facilitated the business of kidnapping foreigners for ransoms", a security source in Algeria said on Sunday.

Algeria is also fiercely opposed to Western military forces taking any role in the Sahara, saying that it is a problem the countries of the region must tackle themselves.

French commandos, along with Mauritanian troops, took part in a raid in July to try to free 78-year-old French hostage Michel Germaneau. They failed to locate him and he was executed soon after.

AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droudkel issued an audio recording saying that by approving the operation, French president Nicolas Sarkozy had "opened the gates of hell".

French defence minister Herve Morin said last week that he wanted to establish contact with the militants holding the seven foreigners hostage and hear their demands.