Algeria leader home after check-up in France

ALGIERS, Apr 24 (Reuters) Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has returned home after a medical check-up in France, a minister close to him said today.

On Thursday the 69-year-old president underwent medical checks at the Paris military hospital of Val de Grace where he was operated on for a haemorrhagic stomach ulcer in December.

Algerian authorities said it was a long-planned follow-up trip. Bouteflika left the hospital on Friday and his office in Algiers said the check-up had been ''very satisfactory''.

''Yes he returned to Algeria,'' Abdelaziz Belkhadem, a minister of state who holds the title of president's personal representative, told Reuters. He declined to say precisely when the president had flown back.

In 2004 Bouteflika became the only Algerian head of state to be re-elected in democratic polls since independence from France in 1962.

He is widely credited with guiding the country out of years of conflict between security forces and Islamist guerrillas in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed.

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