ALGIERS, Sept. 6 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighted here Saturday an importance of counterterrorism cooperation with Algeria and North Africa as a whole.

    Rice made the remarks after her talks with Algerian President Abedelaziz Bouteflika. She has just concluded her visit to Algeria and left for Morocco, the last stop of her four-nation North African tour that also took her to Libya and Tunisia.

    "We have talked about our strong interest in fighting terrorism, our counterterrorism cooperation," Rice told reporters after the two-hour meeting with Bouteflika.

    Describing the talks with Bouteflika and counterterrorism cooperation between Washington and Algier as "good", the U.S. top diplomat urged for more efforts in anti-terrorism cooperation with North African countries, especially Algeria.

    "There is always more that you can do to tighten sharing of information, to make sure you have all the right channels to give technical support in terms of the terrorism threat," Rice told North African leaders, adding "it is not a secret that it is a problem that has really been very salient in the Maghreb."

    Meanwhile, she expressed that "I was very saddened at the loss of life of innocent Algerians in recent terror incidents," referring the three attacks, two car bombs and one suicide blast, that killed some 55 people in August.

    Rice held the talks with President Bouteflika and his Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci at the Algerian presidential palace on Saturday afternoon, shortly after her arrival in the Algerian capital from Tunisia.

    While in Tunis, the U.S. secretary of state held talks with Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the two sides discussed their bilateral relations and regional issues as well as current international hot issues.

    Rice called their talks as effective and served to further enhance the long-running relations between Tunisia and the United States, which she described as profound and based on cooperation and cover many different areas.

    They also reviewed the developments of the situation in the region and the fight against terrorism, as well as Rice's talks with the Libyan leaders, according to local media reports.