Algerians have voted to put their country's bloody past behind them, overwhelmingly backing a peace charter which grants amnesty to extremists responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.

The Government’s Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation was passed with 97.43 per cent support from 80 per cent of the 18 million voters, Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni announced today. In provinces hardest hit by 13 years of civil war, participation exceeded 90 per cent.

Mr Zerhouni told a news conference: "The high level of participation and the ’yes’ vote are a real backing for President Bouteflika’s project. We hope that what was decided by our people will result in good things for the country."

A boycott of the ballot backed by the two main opposition parties, the Socialist Forces Front and the Rally for Culture and Democracy, was apparently largely ignored although there were outbreaks of violence in several eastern provinces.

Human rights groups, who have been critical of the impunity offered to perpetrators of atrocities, questioned the reported level of participation saying that many polling stations were half-empty.

Nevertheless, the result is a powerful mandate for President Bouteflika, who has spent weeks campaigning for the "yes" vote. He believes that it will enable his country to heal the wounds from the decade-long conflict, allowing the country to modernise and strengthen its ties with the West.

The civil war began in 1992 when the military cracked down on the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Islamist political party which had just won victory at the elections, to prevent it from taking power.

Over the next six years more than 150,000 people were killed in fighting between the security forces and the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), which spread its campaign of terror into Europe and pioneered many of the vicious tactics employed today by Islamic insurgents across the region.

The conflict was characterised by massacres of civilians, many of whom had their throats slit. In one case, 400 people were killed in the Algiers suburb of Bentalha in 1997.

The charter offers an amnesty to all those involved, unless they were responsible for massacres, rapes or bombings of public places.

It also rejects any responsibility by the security forces for thousands of 'disappearances' during the civil war, opening it to criticisms that it is one-sided. With the fate of more than 6,000 of the disappeared still unknown, many Algerians have called the charter a step backwards for democracy.

"The word truth does not appear in the charter," said Eric Goldstein of Human Rights Watch. "It offers more to the perpetrators of human rights violations than it does to victims."

Although exhausted by the years of conflict, some Algerians who lost relatives in the conflict are still not ready for a clean slate.

"I do not want the government to give me money to compensate the loss of my son," Cherguin Jguiga to the BBC. "I want it to tell me the truth, and why the security forces kidnapped him - not more but not less."

"I am against the idea of forgiving killers. They must face the same fate as their victims," Ahmed Kennache said in Algiers.

VIOLENT HISTORY

January 1992 Elections cancelled after Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) wins first round. FIS ordered to disband. Violent protests escalate into long-term conflict with an estimated 100,000 murdered by 1998

1999 Abdelaziz Bouteflika, a former Foreign Minister, becomes President. Other candidates resign, denouncing election as fraudulent

2004 Bouteflika wins landslide re-election

September 2005 Referendum yesterday on the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, which would grant amnesty to extremists

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