But given the traditional rivalries that have soured relations between these states, the prospect of a coordinated assault seems remote.

These regional rivalries were in evidence when the foreign ministers -- discreetly accompanied by the intelligence chiefs -- of Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Libya, Mali, Mauritania and Niger convened March 16 in Algiers.

Morocco, Algeria's adversary in a long-running dispute over the mineral-rich Western Sahara, wasn't invited, even though it has been a major player in the conflict with al-Qaida.

The Foreign Ministry in Rabat deplored its "exclusion." Yassine Mansouri, director of Morocco's intelligence service was reported to be "furious" at being snubbed.

The Algerians, who have been the primary target of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the major jihadist force in North Africa, presented the new strategy at the conference, the first high-level regional counter-insurgency meeting in years.

The Algerian plan is based on interdicting and disrupting militants and the smuggling gangs with whom they work by restricting their access to vital supplies of water and fuel in the vast desert wastelands and porous borders in which they operate.

Several Western states, most of them European whose nationals have been kidnapped for ransom, were considering airstrikes against AQIM targets, in part because they fear that if the jihadists continue consolidating they will eventually strike at Western Europe.

To facilitate these operations, the French army's engineering corps was reported to be looking at up to four airstrips in north and central Mali from which to conduct the air campaign.

The lack of surveillance and strike aircraft among the nations of the Maghreb -- the Arabic name for North Africa -- and the Sahara has severely limited these states' counterinsurgency programs as AQIM has expanded its operations from Algeria across the region.

Algeria, the strongest regional military power, is the driving force behind the new strategy. AQIM emerged in 2006 as al-Qaida's regional unit from the Salafist Group for Combat and Preaching, holdover from the country's war with Islamic extremists throughout the 1990s.

AQIM has groups based deep in the Sahara and cells are emerging in Mauritania, Mali and Niger. The group has a transnational agenda that threatens the entire region and its objective is to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Maghreb.

There have been regional initiatives in recent years to coordinate counterinsurgency efforts but these have been hampered not only by regional rivalries but by a general lack of military and political will.

Recent AQIM attacks have reinforced the perception that the region's military forces are simply not capable of tackling the Islamist militants.

Earlier this month, AQIM raiders killed five soldiers in the suicide bombing of an army base in western Niger followed by an assault in which large quantities of weapons and ammunition were seized.

Last June, 28 soldiers were gunned down in a running battle in northern Mali with jihadist raiders.

Algeria and neighboring Morocco have feuded over the Western Sahara since Morocco seized the area in 1975. Some 160,000 Moroccan troops still occupy the region.

Relations between the various governments involved in combating AQIM sank in February after Mali freed four suspected militants whose release had been demanded in exchange for sparing a French hostage the jihadists had threatened to execute.

Algeria and Mauritania withdrew their ambassadors from Mali's capital, Bakomo, in protest.

According to the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington think tank that monitors jihadist terrorism, the new Algerian proposal "to restrict access to water and fuel in the region are actually a regional expansion of a local program that began in 2006 and is credited with reducing militant activity in southern Algeria."

If the Algerian plan does get off the ground, this could lead to greater involvement by the U.S. Africa Command, established in late 2008, to coordinate U.S. military missions in Africa.

It currently runs counterinsurgency training programs in the region but if the battle with the terrorists intensifies it could find itself becoming more involved. There are already indications the Americans want to establish an air base at Tamanrasset in the Sahara.

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