Algeria's state news agency says President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has informed a constitutional body he is resigning

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria's state news agency says President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has informed a constitutional body he is resigning.</s>Algeria's veteran President Abdelaziz Bouteflika informed the Constitutional Council that he is resigning in a move that is to take effect on Tuesday, state television said, after the military called for his impeachment.

Bouteflika "officially advised the Constitutional Council of the end of his term of office as President of the Republic" from Tuesday, said a news ticker on the television.

The report came hours after armed forces chief Ahmed Gaid Salah demanded the immediate launch of impeachment proceedings against Bouteflika as the military dismissed an announcement he would resign before his mandate expires at the end of the month.

In power for two decades, Bouteflika has come under mounting pressure to step down since his decision to seek a fifth term despite rarely being seen in public after suffering a stroke in 2013.

The 82-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, said last month he would pull out of the bid for another term, and on Monday his office said he would resign before his mandate expires on April 28.

The moves failed to quell public ire, with hundreds of students taking to the streets again earlier on Tuesday.</s>Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has submitted his resignation, state news agency APS said on Tuesday, following weeks of mass protests.

The move came after Algeria's army chief of staff demanded immediate constitutional procedures to remove the ailing, 82-year-old leader from office.</s>Abdelaziz Bouteflika has officially notified the president of the country's Constitutional Council about the decision to end up his term as the President of the Republic.

Article 102 suggests that a president suffering from a serious long-term illness is unable to fulfill his responsibilities, so, in this case, the Constitutional Council, after verification, can ask the parliament to consider vacating the presidency.

READ MORE: Over 70 Protesters Reportedly Detained, 11 Policemen Injured in Algeria (VIDEOS)

The resignation comes amid nationwide rallies as people went out on the streets to protest against Bouteflika's intention to run for the fifth term in the upcoming presidential election. Reacting on the protests, Bouteflika said that he would not run for a new term and postponed the election, but a new date has not been set yet.</s>Algeria's state news agency says President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has informed a constitutional body he is resigning

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algeria's state news agency says President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has informed a constitutional body he is resigning.</s>ALGIERS, April 1 (Reuters) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is now expected to resign this month after resisting weeks of protests, established himself by ending a ruinous civil war but came undone over corruption and economic stagnation.

Bouteflika, 82, a veteran of Algeria's war for independence, has rarely been seen in public since a stroke in 2013 but held out despite mass demonstrations against his two-decade-old rule.

He had sought to fend off the wave of dissent that began on Feb 22 by reversing his decision to seek a fifth term. But he did not say when he would go, further angering protesters.

In a report on Monday, the APS news agency also avoided mentioning a date, but said Bouteflika would leave before his term ended on April 28. Two private TV channels said on Sunday he could step down this week.

A fighter in the 1954-1962 war to end French colonial rule, Bouteflika became independent Algeria's first foreign minister and one of the forces behind the Non-Aligned Movement that gave a global voice to Africa, Asia and Latin America.

He championed post-colonial states, challenged what he saw as the hegemony of the United States and helped turn his country into a seed-bed of 1960s idealism.

He welcomed Che Guevara, and a young Nelson Mandela got his first military training in Algeria. Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, on the run from U.S. police, was given refuge. Cleaver held court in his Algiers safe house with Timothy Leary, the drug-taking high priest of U.S. counter-culture.

As president of the U.N. General Assembly, Bouteflika invited Yasser Arafat to address the body in 1974, a historic step towards international recognition of the Palestinian cause.

By the end of the 1970s, though, Bouteflika had fallen from favour at home and went into exile. He returned to public life when Algeria was being ravaged by a conflict with Islamist militants which killed an estimated 200,000 people.

First elected president in 1999, he negotiated a truce to end the fighting and wrested power from the secretive military-based establishment known as "le pouvoir" (the powers-that-be).

Helped by oil and gas revenues, Algeria became more peaceful and richer. But it remains mired in corruption and political and economic torpor in a region where uprisings brought changes in neighbouring countries.

With a cushion of foreign reserves and a population wary of major upheaval after their civil war, Algeria avoided the Arab Spring revolutions that toppled leaders across the region in 2011.

But protests against poor living standards, the lack of job opportunities and services were common even before the mass protests, and foreign investors are keen for economic reforms that will cut the red tape that often hampers business.

Some biographers say Bouteflika was born in Tlemcen, western Algeria, and others give his place of birth as Oujda, just over the border in Morocco.

Aged 19, he joined the rebellion against French rule as a protege of Houari Boumediene, a commander who would later become Algerian president.

After independence, Bouteflika became minister for youth and tourism at the age of 25. The following year he was made foreign minister.

Dressed in the tailored suits and sunglasses fashionable in the 1960s, Bouteflika became a spokesman for states emerging from colonial rule, given added authority by the cachet Algeria had earned from defeating France.

Bouteflika demanded that Communist China be given a seat in the United Nations. He railed against apartheid rule in South Africa.

The invitation to Arafat to address the General Assembly was controversial. Only two years before, Palestinian gunmen took hostage and killed members of the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich. Bouteflika watched from the chairman's dais as Arafat, a gun holster on his waistband, addressed the assembly in New York.

When pro-Palestinian militant Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal", kidnapped oil ministers from an OPEC meeting in Vienna in 1975, he demanded to be flown with his hostages to Algiers. Bouteflika was shown on camera embracing Carlos at the airport before they sat down to negotiate the hostages' release.

When Boumediene died in 1978, Bouteflika lost his mentor. He was replaced as foreign minister and an investigation was launched into financial impropriety. Bouteflika said the allegations were invented as part of a political plot.

He left Algeria in the early 1980s and settled in Dubai, where he became an adviser to a member of the emirate's ruling family. He returned home in 1987 but kept a low profile, refusing offers of government posts.

In the meantime, Algeria was unravelling. The military-backed government annulled a parliamentary election in 1992 that Islamists were on the verge of winning. In the conflict that followed, whole villages were massacred and civilians walking in city streets had their throats slit.

Bouteflika, backed by the military, was elected president in 1999 with a pledge to stop the fighting. Against fierce opposition from the establishment, he gave an amnesty to militants who laid down their arms. The violence declined dramatically.

He won re-election in 2004 and again in 2009, although his opponents said the votes were rigged. Through a series of ferocious turf battles with his security forces behind the scenes, Bouteflika had, by the start of his third term, become Algerian's most powerful president in 30 years.

He consolidated that power last year by dismissing about a dozen top military officers.

Little is known about his private life. Official records mention no wife, though some accounts say a marriage took place in 1990. Bouteflika lived with his mother, Mansouriah, in an apartment in Algiers, where she used to prepare his meals.

Age and poor health caught up with him. French doctors operated on him in 2005 for what officials said was a stomach ulcer. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables said he was suffering from cancer. He became weaker after his mother died in 2009.

Bouteflika said in a speech in Setif, in eastern Algeria, in May 2012 that it was time for his generation to hand over to new leaders. "For us, it's over," he said.

Months later at the start of 2013, a stroke put him into a Paris hospital for three months. He was seen little in public after returning to Algeria to convalesce. (editing by Ulf Laessing, Mark Heinrich and Philippa Fletcher)</s>Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has resigned after weeks of mass protests, the state news agency APS reports.

Mr Bouteflika, who had been in power for 20 years, had already dropped plans to seek a fifth term as opposition to his rule grew. The powerful Algerian army had called for the 82-year-old to be declared incapable of carrying out his duties. He suffered a stroke six years ago and has rarely appeared in public since. -Via BBC</s>ALGIERS (Reuters) - Hundreds of Algerians took to the streets of the capital late on Tuesday to celebrate the departure of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after 20 years of power, residents said.

Young people were waving Algerian flags or driving in convoys through the city center, where on Feb. 22 mass protests broke out against the veteran ruler.

Bouteflika, 82, had earlier submitted his resignation, state media said.</s>Hundreds of students hit the streets of the Algerian capital Tuesday dismissing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's promise to resign as a diversion and demanding an overhaul of the country's political system.

The announcement on Bouteflika's resignation "doesn't change anything", psychology student Meriem Medjdoub said as she marched in central Algiers with around 1,000 protesters.

"We are demanding a radical change," she told AFP.

The ailing 82-year-old Bouteflika has been clinging to power despite weeks of protests that first erupted in February when he said we would seek a fifth term in power.

On Monday his office said the president, who has rarely been seen in public since a 2013 stroke, will resign "before April 28" -- the date marking the end of his current mandate.

The announcement came after a succession of loyalists deserted him in the face of the massive protests rocking Algeria.

It was greeted by the beeping of some car horns in Algiers on Monday, but there was little sign of euphoria as people insisted that the whole ruling establishment must go.

Some Algerians even shrugged it away as an "April's Fool" and a "non-event".

On Tuesday it was clear that for many Algerians Bouteflika's departure after 20 years in charge was not decisive enough.

El Watan newspaper said the announced resignation was a "half measure... as long as the departure of all those who symbolise the (ruling) system has not really started".

Liberte daily agreed saying "the end of Bouteflika's long reign is far from being the same as the end of the system".

Students on the streets of Algiers voiced doubts and concerns.

"It is a diversion... they are trying to gain time," said Imen Zaaf.

"I wonder what is behind all this," chimed in Yasmine, who like many Algerians believes the announced departure of Bouteflika is a manoeuvre by the veteran leader and members of his inner circle.

The presidency, in a brief statement carried by the official APS news agency Monday, said Bouteflika will step down after "important decisions" are taken.

He would take "steps to ensure state institutions continue to function during the transition period", the statement said.

That in itself has raised a number of questions, with some seeing it as a bid by Bouteflika to place his allies firmly in power during a transition period.

The Movement for the Society of Peace, a moderate Islamist party, said "the president's resignation... without reforms could end up conspiring against the popular movement".

"Bouteflika's departure is part of the solution," journalism student Amina Yahyaoui. But "all the members of the government" must go as well and then "the people should be allowed to vote freely to elect a new president".

Algeria's constitution says that once the president officially resigns the speaker of the upper house of parliament would act as interim leader for up to 90 days during which a presidential election must be organised.

As rumours swirl of frantic behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, prosecutors on Monday announced they had banned corruption suspects from leaving Algeria after launching graft probes against unnamed individuals.

The authorities did not say who was being targeted by probes into corruption and illegal money transfers abroad, but they followed the arrest of the president's key backer, businessman tycoon Ali Haddad.

Haddad, who Forbes magazine describes as one of Algeria's wealthiest entrepreneurs, was detained overnight Saturday to Sunday at a border post with neighbouring Tunisia.

Local media said a search of his car revealed an unspecified amount of foreign currency and Algerian dinars which he did not declare at the border customs office.

Haddad was due to appear before an investigating magistrate.

The statement on Bouteflika's impending resignation came after he named a new government Sunday, made up mainly of technocrats under recently appointed premier Noureddine Bedoui.

The administration -- supposed to steer the country towards transition -- included army chief General Ahmed Gaid Salah remaining in his position as deputy defence minister.

Gaid Salah, a long-time Bouteflika ally, last week called on the president to resign or be declared unfit to rule, becoming one of the first of his faithful supporters to abandon him.

Among the other key Bouteflika backers is his younger brother and special adviser Said, who was frequently cited in the past as a likely successor to the president.

Discreet and rarely seen in public, Said Bouteflika has exerted increasing influence behind the scenes as his brother's health woes worsened, but the president's resignation could take away much of his power.</s>ALGIERS (Reuters) - Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who is now expected to resign this month after resisting weeks of protests, established himself by ending a ruinous civil war but came undone over corruption and economic stagnation.

Bouteflika, 82, a veteran of Algeria's war for independence, has rarely been seen in public since a stroke in 2013 but held out despite mass demonstrations against his two-decade-old rule.

He had sought to fend off the wave of dissent that began on Feb 22 by reversing his decision to seek a fifth term. But he did not say when he would go, further angering protesters.

In a report on Monday, the APS news agency also avoided mentioning a date, but said Bouteflika would leave before his term ended on April 28. Two private TV channels said on Sunday he could step down this week.

A fighter in the 1954-1962 war to end French colonial rule, Bouteflika became independent Algeria's first foreign minister and one of the forces behind the Non-Aligned Movement that gave a global voice to Africa, Asia and Latin America.

He championed post-colonial states, challenged what he saw as the hegemony of the United States and helped turn his country into a seed-bed of 1960s idealism.

He welcomed Che Guevara, and a young Nelson Mandela got his first military training in Algeria. Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, on the run from U.S. police, was given refuge. Cleaver held court in his Algiers safe house with Timothy Leary, the drug-taking high priest of U.S. counter-culture.

As president of the U.N. General Assembly, Bouteflika invited Yasser Arafat to address the body in 1974, a historic step towards international recognition of the Palestinian cause.

By the end of the 1970s, though, Bouteflika had fallen from favour at home and went into exile. He returned to public life when Algeria was being ravaged by a conflict with Islamist militants which killed an estimated 200,000 people.

First elected president in 1999, he negotiated a truce to end the fighting and wrested power from the secretive military-based establishment known as "le pouvoir" (the powers-that-be).

Helped by oil and gas revenues, Algeria became more peaceful and richer. But it remains mired in corruption and political and economic torpor in a region where uprisings brought changes in neighbouring countries.

With a cushion of foreign reserves and a population wary of major upheaval after their civil war, Algeria avoided the Arab Spring revolutions that toppled leaders across the region in 2011.

But protests against poor living standards, the lack of job opportunities and services were common even before the mass protests, and foreign investors are keen for economic reforms that will cut the red tape that often hampers business.

Some biographers say Bouteflika was born in Tlemcen, western Algeria, and others give his place of birth as Oujda, just over the border in Morocco.

Aged 19, he joined the rebellion against French rule as a protege of Houari Boumediene, a commander who would later become Algerian president.

After independence, Bouteflika became minister for youth and tourism at the age of 25. The following year he was made foreign minister.

Dressed in the tailored suits and sunglasses fashionable in the 1960s, Bouteflika became a spokesman for states emerging from colonial rule, given added authority by the cachet Algeria had earned from defeating France.

Bouteflika demanded that Communist China be given a seat in the United Nations. He railed against apartheid rule in South Africa.

The invitation to Arafat to address the General Assembly was controversial. Only two years before, Palestinian gunmen took hostage and killed members of the Israeli team at the Olympic Games in Munich. Bouteflika watched from the chairman's dais as Arafat, a gun holster on his waistband, addressed the assembly in New York.

When pro-Palestinian militant Illich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal", kidnapped oil ministers from an OPEC meeting in Vienna in 1975, he demanded to be flown with his hostages to Algiers. Bouteflika was shown on camera embracing Carlos at the airport before they sat down to negotiate the hostages' release.

When Boumediene died in 1978, Bouteflika lost his mentor. He was replaced as foreign minister and an investigation was launched into financial impropriety. Bouteflika said the allegations were invented as part of a political plot.

He left Algeria in the early 1980s and settled in Dubai, where he became an adviser to a member of the emirate's ruling family. He returned home in 1987 but kept a low profile, refusing offers of government posts.

In the meantime, Algeria was unravelling. The military-backed government annulled a parliamentary election in 1992 that Islamists were on the verge of winning. In the conflict that followed, whole villages were massacred and civilians walking in city streets had their throats slit.

Bouteflika, backed by the military, was elected president in 1999 with a pledge to stop the fighting. Against fierce opposition from the establishment, he gave an amnesty to militants who laid down their arms. The violence declined dramatically.

He won re-election in 2004 and again in 2009, although his opponents said the votes were rigged. Through a series of ferocious turf battles with his security forces behind the scenes, Bouteflika had, by the start of his third term, become Algerian's most powerful president in 30 years.

He consolidated that power last year by dismissing about a dozen top military officers.

Little is known about his private life. Official records mention no wife, though some accounts say a marriage took place in 1990. Bouteflika lived with his mother, Mansouriah, in an apartment in Algiers, where she used to prepare his meals.

Age and poor health caught up with him. French doctors operated on him in 2005 for what officials said was a stomach ulcer. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables said he was suffering from cancer. He became weaker after his mother died in 2009.

Bouteflika said in a speech in Setif, in eastern Algeria, in May 2012 that it was time for his generation to hand over to new leaders. "For us, it's over," he said.

Months later at the start of 2013, a stroke put him into a Paris hospital for three months. He was seen little in public after returning to Algeria to convalesce.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.

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President Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigns amid pressure from the public and the military, having ruled the country since 1999.