Two stages of the Dakar Rally have been cancelled because of security fears on the Mali-Mauritania border, officials said on Sunday.

Stages 10 and 11 have been scrapped after reports suggested that radical Islamist organisation, the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), was active on the border between the two countries.

"A few days ago, we had this disturbing news and it was decisive in the modification of the layout of the course," said a Mali security source.

"Friendly foreign services had indicated that in the last few weeks there has been a movement of dozens of salafists between the Mali and Mauritania frontiers, not far from the area where the race was due to pass."

The 10th and 11th stages of the race, which would have seen drivers and riders racing from Nema in Mauritania to Timbuktu in Mali and back, have now been cancelled.

Stage 10 will now be a 400km loop starting and ending in Nema while the 11th stage will be from Nema to Ayoun-el-Atrous.

In November, the French secret service had warned the Mali government of the dangers posed by the GSPC.

The GSPC, created in 1998 by dissidents from the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), rejects Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's policy of reconciliation.

It is regarded as the only radical Islamist movement left in the country capable of causing serious trouble.

The French secret service believe the organisation can call upon 500 armed men of which 400 are in Algeria with the remainder in the Sahara zones of Mauritania, Mali and Niger.

Dakar 2007 gets underway on January 6 in the Portuguese capital Lisbon and ends in Dakar, Senegal, on January 21.

(China Daily December 26, 2006)