Algeria - Government, Politics In 1986 the French Government co-operated with the Algerian Government by expelling 13 members of the MDA, and in 1986-88 it suppressed three MDA newspapers that were being published in France. In 1987 the Algerian Government agreed to release the assets of former French settlers, which had been "frozen" since independence, and to allow former settlers to sell their land to the Algerian State; in return, financial assistance was provided by France. The Algerian army´s coup in January 1992 was welcomed by the French Government, which was rumoured to have been consulted beforehand. French economic and political support for the Algerian Government increased in early 1993, following the appointment of Edouard Balladur as Prime Minister of France. Alleged Islamist militants residing in France continued to be prosecuted, and in August 1994, following the killing of five French embassy employees in Algiers, 26 suspected Algerian extremists were interned in northern France; 20 of them were expelled to Burkina Faso. In September the French embassy in Algiers confirmed that entry visas would be issued to Algerians only in exceptional cases. By November, when the number of French nationals killed by Islamist militants in Algeria had reached 21, the French Government was urging its citizens to evacuate Algeria. An Air France aircraft was hijacked in Algiers in December by members of the GIA, resulting in the deaths of three passengers and, later, in the killing of the hijackers by French security forces when the aircraft landed in Marseilles, France. In retaliation, the GIA "declared war" on France. Morocco imposed entry visas on Algerian nationals in August 1994, following the murder of two Spanish tourists in a Moroccan hotel, allegedly by Algerian Islamist extremists. Algeria reciprocated by temporarily closing the border between the two countries and imposing entry visas on Moroccan nationals. Tensions eased slightly in September when Algeria announced the appointment of a new ambassador to Morocco, and in early 1995 Algerian-Moroccan negotiations commenced on the development of bilateral co-operation. However, in December King Hassan of Morocco expressed his disapproval at Algeria´s alleged continuing support for the independence of Western Sahara, and he demanded that UAM activities be suspended. A UAM summit meeting, scheduled for later that month, was subsequently postponed. In December 1996 the Ministers of the Interior of Algeria and Morocco held a meeting in Rabat, prompting speculation of a rapprochement between the two countries. Algeria´s relations with Germany (strained by the presence of FIS spokesman Rebah Kebir in Germany) improved in March 1996 when Werner Hoyer, Germany´s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, visited Algeria. Hoyer was the first senior German official to visit Algeria since 1989. Although Kebir was granted political refugee status in Germany in October 1996, the German authorities strove to demonstrate their intolerance of armed Islamists in the country, and in April they arrested four Algerian nationals (including two sons of Abbasi Madani) and charged them with belonging to a criminal organization and smuggling arms and explosives to Islamist terrorist groups in Algeria. In June 1997 the two men were found guilty of the charges and sentenced to short terms of imprisonment. In December 1996 Algeria commenced discussions with officials of the EU on Algeria´s admission to the Euro-Mediterranean free-trade zone; negotiations were expected to continue until at least 2000.