Libyan leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil expressed confidence Monday that Algeria would not shelter anyone who poses a threat to his country, in a reference to Moammar Gadhafi’s family members who were granted asylum by Algiers.

"We appreciate the humanitarian position of Algeria for hosting the families, including women and children, but we are convinced that it would not shelter those who represent a threat for Libya's security," said Abdel Jalil after meeting Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Libyan leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the council that overthrew Moammar Gadhafi, arrived in Algeria Sunday for a state visit that comes amid a period of strained relations.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and an entourage of senior government officials and foreign diplomats met Abdeljalil at the airport when he arrived around 4:00 pm (1500 GMT), an Agence France Presse photographer said.

President Nicolas Sarkozy formally admitted Saturday that France failed in its duty towards the Algerian loyalists who fought on Paris' side in their country's war of independence.

Around 60,000 pro-French Algerians, known as "harkis", came to France after the war, but approximately as many again were abandoned to face bloody reprisals in Algeria at the hands of their pro-independence countrymen.

Algeria is opposed to Mali's break-up and wants dialogue to resolve the crisis with its southern neighbor, Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia was quoting as saying Friday, warning against foreign intervention.

Algeria "will never accept questioning Mali's territorial integrity," Ouyahia told France's Le Monde newspaper on Thursday, before a Tuareg rebel group had declared the independence of their desert homeland they call Azawad.

Armed Islamists seized the Algerian consulate in Gao in northeastern Mali on Thursday and abducted seven diplomats, Algeria's foreign ministry and witnesses said.

"The consul and six members of the Algerian consular mission have been taken to an unknown destination," the foreign ministry said in a statement published by the APS news agency.

The body of an Islamist gunman branded a "monster" who boasted of killing seven people in southern France is due to arrive in Algeria on Thursday, a family member told AFP on Wednesday.

Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent, was killed by police March 22 after a lengthy stand-off at his Toulouse apartment.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev's Middle East envoy was in Algiers on Sunday for consultations on the deadly year-old crisis in Syria, a Russian diplomat said.

Mikhail Bogdanov, who arrived in the Algerian capital on Saturday, was holding talks with Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, the APS news agency reported.

Nineteen people were killed in northwestern Algeria early Sunday when the bus they were riding plunged into a ravine, officials said.

Another 30 people were injured in the accident, which occurred near the city of Tiaret at around 2:00 am, public safety spokesman Farouk Achour said.

Saudi Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz went to Algeria for a vacation after the results of medical tests he underwent in the United States were "reassuring," the royal palace announced on Wednesday.

Prince Nayef, the kingdom's veteran internal security czar, "has finished previously scheduled medical tests in (the U.S. city of) Cleveland with reassuring results," said the statement carried by state news agency SPA.

Fifty years after losing the Algerian war, France is still suffering fallout from a conflict that shamed its armed forces and fuels bitter political rows even in its latest election battle.

Though French officials are keen to play down the 50th anniversary on March 18 of the ceasefire that ended the conflict, the war's legacy has reared its head in the run-up to France's April-May two-round presidential vote.