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 ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) - Algerians overwhelmingly approved a peace plan that provides a broad amnesty for Islamic extremists but which critics denounced as a whitewash of crimes committed during a bloody internal war, official referendum results showed Friday.
The plan, called the Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation, got more than 97 percent of Thursday's vote — a giant win that could further strengthen President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, said Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni.
Nearly 80 percent of the more than 18 million eligible voters cast ballots, the minister said. In Khenchla, a town in the east 60 miles from Algeria's border with Tunisia, 99.95 percent turned out. But the turnout rate was far lower — just over 11 percent — in the main towns of Tizi-Ouzou and Bejaia in Kabylie, a restive Berber region east of the capital Algiers where there had been calls to boycott the vote.
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