2023-04-24 00:59:33
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune will head to Paris in the second half of June, on a visit that was expected in May, after turning the page on the latest tension between Algeria and France.
And a statement issued by the Algerian presidency stated that today, Tebboune received a phone call from French President Emmanuel Macron to congratulate him on Eid al-Fitr. The two presidents discussed, according to the statement, “bilateral relations and ways to enhance them, including the state visit of the President of the Republic to France, and they agreed on the second half of next June as a date” for it.
And the statement continued, “Work is underway and continuous by the teams of the two countries to make the visit a success, which will come ten months after Macron’s state visit to Algeria, in a step to improve relations that deteriorated in the fall of 2021.”
Macron’s visit seeks to ease tensions between the two countries, but a new diplomatic crisis arose in February due to the assistance of the French consulate in Tunisia, French-Algerian activist Amira Bouraoui, to travel to France.
Despite the issuance of a decision preventing her from leaving Algeria, Bouraoui entered Tunisia on the third of February, before Tunisian security stopped her while she was trying to board a flight towards Paris, before she was finally able to travel to France on the sixth of February, despite the Tunisian authorities’ attempt to deport her to Algeria. .
Algeria claimed that its travel to France constitutes a “secret and illegal evacuation” that was carried out with the help of French diplomats and security personnel, and summoned its ambassador to Paris, Said Moussa, for consultations.
A month ago, Presidents Tebboune and Macron are trying to end this crisis, and “they agreed to strengthen communication channels … to prevent the recurrence of this kind of unfortunate misunderstanding,” according to the Elysee. The Algerian ambassador returned to Paris.
In the year 2020, Algeria half-heartedly received a report prepared by the historian Benjamin Stora, upon assignment from Macron, in which he called for a series of initiatives to achieve reconciliation between the two countries. The report was devoid of any recommendation for an apology from the French side, which Algeria has constantly demanded.
Macron reaffirmed at the beginning of the year that he would not ask the Algerians for “forgiveness” for France’s colonization of their country, but he hoped to receive his Algerian counterpart in Paris this year to continue working with him on the file of memory and reconciliation between the two countries, explaining that “the worst that could happen is that We say we apologize and each of us goes our own way,” stressing that “the work of memory and history is not an inventory of calculation, it is quite the opposite.”
(agencies)
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