The diplomatic crisis between Paris and Algiers leaves more beautifully, only a fortnight after an lull: Emmanuel Macron decided Tuesday to expel twelve Algerian consular agents in response to a similar measure from Algeria, accused of being responsible for this new “brutal degradation”.
The French president, who had personally maintained himself on the phone with his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune on March 31 to relaunch the dialogue after months of scramble, also “decided to recall for consultations the French ambassador to Algiers, Stéphane Romatet”, announced the Élysée in a press release.
The Algerian authorities declared on Sunday persona non grata twelve French officials from the Ministry of the Interior, giving them 48 hours to leave Algeria, in response to the arrest in France, then to its detention, of an Algerian consular agent.
The French head of state had first timed, but seeing that the Algerian power did not come back to his decision, he decided to go on the front line to show that he does not reluctant to the showdown.
The expulsion of these French people, who were on the way to France on Tuesday evening, “ignores the basic rules of our legal proceedings” and “is unjustified and incomprehensible,” said the French presidency.
She decided to proceed “symmetrically”, therefore also within 48 hours, “to the expulsion of twelve agents serving in the Algerian consular and diplomatic network in France”.
For the Élysée, “the Algerian authorities take responsibility for a brutal degradation of our bilateral relations”. For the chief of French diplomacy Jean-Noël Barrot, who had gone to Algiers in early April to sew up the ties but had warned these last hours against possible reprisals, Algiers “chose climbing”.
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Algeria had defended its “sovereign” decision on Monday evening on Monday evening, bringing the French Minister Bruno Retailleau to the French Minister “the whole responsibility” of this renewed tensions. This figure of the French right has made the voice of a line of firmness in recent months against Algeria, especially in migratory matters.
“Bruno Retailleau has nothing to do with this judicial affair,” said Barrot on Tuesday, insisting on the independence of French justice.
Three men, including one employee in one of the consulates of Algeria in France, were indicted Friday in Paris for arrest, kidnapping, sequestration or arbitrary detention followed by liberation before the 7th day, in relation to a terrorist enterprise, according to the national French anti -terrorist prosecution.
In this case which concerns the opponent of the Algerian regime Amir Boukhors, influencer nicknamed Amir Dz, these men are also prosecuted for association of criminal terrorist criminals. They were placed in pre -trial detention.
Despite this sudden relapse, the Élysée considered that “the very interest of France and Algeria” was to “resume dialogue”, urging Algiers to “show responsibility”.
“The dialogue, always, but not one -way,” nuanced Mr. Barrot.
Fifteen days ago, the two countries linked by an often painful common history had decided to turn the page on a crisis of rare intensity which had precipitated them on the edge of the rupture.
It had started eight months earlier when Mr. Macron had provided total support to a plan of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty for Western Sahara, claimed for 50 years by the separatists of the Polisario supported by Algiers. Algeria had immediately withdrawn its ambassador to Paris.
The two heads of state had then instructed their foreign ministers to regain dialogue on all “irritating” subjects, including the migratory question and the arrest of the Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal.
Mr. Barrot insisted on Tuesday that “legal proceedings have nothing to do with the relationship between two governments”.
He finally considered that Mr. Sansal, sentenced to prison at first instance in Algeria, “did not” have the “diplomatic problems. “And I dare to believe, given his state of health and his situation, to a gesture of humanity on the part of the Algerian authorities.”
According to the historian Pierre Vermeren, professor at Sorbonne University in Paris, “the crisis proves that inside the army, the Algerian” staff “,” there are part of the generals or colonels who want to break with France, who do not want to be reconciled, who want to sabotage the work of takeover of normal relations “. “So they found a new pretext and have returned to the hand,” he told AFP.
AFP
