A split has blown open within Algeria’s ruling party ahead of an April presidential election, after its leader accused the powerful intelligence chief of opposing the ailing incumbent’s re-election.

A split has blown open within Algeria's ruling party ahead of an April presidential election, after its leader accused the powerful intelligence chief of opposing the ailing incumbent's re-election.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in power for 15 years, has yet to say if his health will permit him to stand for a fourth term following a mini-stroke that confined him to hospital in Paris for three months last year.

But ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) secretary general Amar Saidani has repeatedly backed a fourth term for the 76-year-old incumbent, even though he has not been seen or heard in public since his stroke.

Despite much-vaunted moves by Bouteflika to roll back the prerogatives of the military -- a hallmark of his presidency -- the army and its DRS intelligence agency retain much of the political power they have wielded ever since independence in 1962.

In an interview published this week, Saidani demanded that veteran DRS director Mohamed "Tewfik" Mediene step down, saying that his persistent interference in politics came at the detriment of security in the strategic North African country.
 
He accused the shadowy general, who has held his post since 1990 but never appears in public, of a string of security failures, including the military's handling of a hostage-taking at a desert gas plant by armed Islamists last year in which nearly 40 foreign workers died.

"Instead of managing the country's security, this department (the DRS) interferes with the activities of political parties, the judiciary and the press," Saidani said, in the first such open criticism of the veteran intelligence chief.

But his tirade drew condemnation from dissident members of the FLN, which has been Algeria's leading party since independence except for a few years when the army dispensed with party politics altogether.

Abderahmane Belayat, who served as FLN interim leader from January last year until Saidani's controversial election in August, said the dissidents would no longer recognise his leadership of the party.

"Saidani's accusations targeted the army, the presidency, the judiciary and even the government even though we are the majority party which granted legitimacy to all these institutions. How he can accuse them of failing?" asked Belayat, whom Saidani accuses of being on the DRS payroll.