PARIS - The 19-year-old state of emergency in Algeria will end within days, Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci said on Monday.

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A state of emergency has been in force in Algeria since 1992 and the government has come under pressure to ditch emergency laws following uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

"In the coming days, we will talk about it as if it was a thing of the past," Medelci told the French radio station Europe 1 in an interview.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said earlier this month the state of emergency would be lifted in the very near future.