Islamic Fundamentalists Halt Algeria Protests : Unrest: Algiers is quiet, but the North African country’s march to democracy is at least temporarily shelved.

CAIRO — Islamic fundamentalist leaders in Algeria ordered a halt to anti-government demonstrations Wednesday, and an uneasy quiet blanketed Algiers, the capital, after a violent military crackdown on pre-election protests that appears to have temporarily shelved the country’s move toward democracy.

Arab diplomats said it is likely that Algeria’s national elections will be postponed for at least several months as President Chadli Bendjedid seeks to form a new government and contain the mounting violence that erupted around Islamic activists’ calls for immediate presidential elections and election law reform.

Bendjedid’s declaration of a state of emergency early Wednesday, together with the resignation of Prime Minister Mouloud Hamrouche’s government and a postponement of the June 27 parliamentary elections, signaled a serious setback in Algeria’s rapid transformation from a country dominated for nearly three decades by the ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) to one of the few multi-party democracies in the Arab world.

The upcoming elections also were to provide a key test for the growing political muscle of Islamic fundamentalists in North Africa, blossoming despite occasional government crackdowns in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Sudan under the anti-Western sentiment nurtured during the crisis in the Persian Gulf.

Late Wednesday, former Foreign Minister Sid Ahmed Ghozali, 55, was named the country’s new prime minister, the Algerian Press Agency said. Ghozali, a former engineer, was holding consultations to form a new government, the agency said.

Arab press reports said the government had dispatched armored vehicles to quell fierce street fighting between security forces and Muslim demonstrators armed with iron bars, axes, sabers and firebombs amid growing concern that Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front, or FIS, was preparing to declare an Islamic republic.

Arab diplomats said the crackdown will allow Bendjedid to undercut the fundamentalists by building a new ruling coalition with French-influenced middle classes and intellectuals alarmed by the growing strident nature of the Islamic movement.

“I think the major part of the trouble is over, unless something happens after prayers on Friday,” said one diplomat. “But certainly, Chadli has lost a great deal of his prestige in this.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdullah Baali said in a telephone interview that no new incidents of violence were reported Wednesday. “I hope things will return to normal in the next few hours,” he said.

The Algerian president, faced with growing resentment of the FLN amid the millions of urban poor disillusioned with Algeria’s crumbling, government-dominated economy, instituted a broad-ranging series of reforms that for the first time removed many controls on the press and the private sector and legalized a wide variety of political parties, including the FIS, the only legalized Islamic political party in the region.

The Islamic Front unexpectedly captured a substantial majority in local council elections last June. But in the run-up to the now-postponed national parliamentary elections--Algeria’s first--Islamic leaders staged a series of strikes against new election laws that threatened to undercut their strength by lessening the impact of the vote in poor urban areas, where support for the Islamic movement is strongest.

Backing for the strikes was weak at first, but tens of thousands of people were filling the streets over the weekend and through Tuesday in protests demanding Bendjedid’s resignation and immediate presidential elections. Police dispersed the crowds with tear gas and water cannon, and shortly after midnight Wednesday morning, Bendjedid declared a state of emergency, appealing to Algerians to “mobilize to save the country” and to allow for a “deepening and consolidation of the democratic process.”

At least seven people were killed in the violence as demonstrators hurled firebombs at the Hall of Justice and police responded with tear gas and live ammunition.

An uneasy quiet prevailed after the pre-dawn crackdown, with most shops, banks and offices closed and armored vehicles surrounding key government buildings and the Algerian capital’s main gathering places. The army was also reported to be deployed in strength in the cities of Oran and Constantine.

The center of Algiers was empty except for an occasional pedestrian seemingly hurrying to get home, according to news agency reports from the capital. Groups of young people with black headbands were stopping private cars, allegedly looking for people who had “participated in the repression,” according to the reports.

The FIS’ soft-spoken leader, philosophy professor Abbasi Madani, late Wednesday ordered an end to anti-government protests pending further orders from the Islamic party, whose leadership was meeting to consider how to respond to the crisis. Party spokesmen initially called the crackdown “a victory” and said a “dialogue” has been opened with the government.

Hocine Ait Ahmed, the popular leader of one of two Berber-dominated parties that have resisted the Islamic movement’s attempts to eject Western culture from Algeria, said he questioned whether the declaration of a state of emergency was a smoke-screen to allow the army to take control of the country.

“One cannot resolve the economic and political problems in Algeria through the return of the army,” he cautioned. “That would be the greatest catastrophe. Who knows if there are not people who, beyond the state of siege, do not want to make one swallow a coup d’etat ?”

Governments throughout North Africa have grown increasingly nervous in recent months over the upcoming elections in Algeria and have criticized Bendjedid’s decision to legalize an Islamic party.

In neighboring Tunisia last month, more than 100 people, including members of the military, were arrested in connection with a purported fundamentalist plot to overthrow the government. Reports in the Tunisian press said the government believes that the Islamic organization, Ennahda, was training militias in guerrilla tactics and infiltrating government agencies and other institutions with the goal of launching terrorist operations.

Times staff writer Rone Tempest, in Paris, contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND: The Islamic Salvation Front

The Islamic Salvation Front, born in the aftermath of Algeria’s bloody 1988 riots, almost immediately evolved into a powerful force, luring the poor with promises of a better life based on divine precepts. The Muslim fundamentalist movement, known as the FIS, came to life after the adoption of a new constitution permitting political parties in the formerly one-party Marxist-socialist state. It was officially recognized in September, 1990, and within months overwhelmingly won local elections in Algeria’s first multi-party vote. The front’s 3 million members include a fringe of intellectuals, but its broad-based support comes from merchants and disaffected or jobless youth.

Algeria at a Glance

Here are some facts and figures on Algeria.

LAND: On the southern shore of the Mediterranean, it is the second-largest African country after Sudan. Its 919,595-square-mile territory-almost six times the size of California-is mostly uninhabited desert.

PEOPLE: Most of the estimated 25 million people are Arab and Muslim, with a significant Berber minority. Most live in a narrow, 700-mile-long fertile coastal strip.

ECONOMY: Algeria once earned more than $12 billion a year from oil and gas. But oil prices plummeted in the 1980s while the population explosion continued, causing severe shortages of consumer goods. More than 1 million Algerians live and work in Western Europe and send home hundreds of millions of dollars a year.