Diplomatic relations between Paris and Algiers are not improving at all. During a television interview on Saturday, the president of Algeria thus dismissed the idea of a visit to France, which he considered humiliating.
“I will not go to Canossa,” said Abdelmadjid Tebboune. Popularized by German Chancellor Bismarck at the end of the 19th century, this expression means to go and beg for forgiveness. It refers to the step that the Germanic Emperor Henry IV was forced to take in the 11th century, who went to the Italian town of Canossa to implore Pope Gregory VII to lift the excommunication which he This had hit him.
A dispute over Western Sahara
The visit of the Algerian president, constantly postponed since May 2023, was most recently planned between the end of September and the beginning of October 2024. But relations between Algiers and Paris became frosty again after the announcement at the end of July of Paris’ support for the plan. Morocco’s autonomy for the disputed territory of Western Sahara. Algiers immediately recalled its ambassador and reduced its diplomatic representation by keeping only one charge d’affaires.
Referring to French colonization (from 1830 to 1962) and the question of memory, the Algerian president estimated that “Algeria was chosen for the great replacement, the real great replacement”, consisting of “chasing out the local population for bring back a European population with massacres, with a genocidal army.”
“I do not accept lies about Algeria. We had a population of about four million, and 132 years later we were barely nine million. There was a genocide,” said Abdelmadjid Tebboune. “We are asking for the historical truth,” he insisted, accusing a “hateful minority” in France of blocking any progress on the memorial issue.
A tackle on French nuclear tests
Also addressing the issue of French nuclear tests in Algeria, the Head of State also told France: “you want us to be friends, come and clean up the nuclear test sites”. Between 1960 and 1966, France carried out 17 nuclear tests on several sites in the Algerian Sahara. Documents declassified in 2013 revealed still significant radioactive fallout, stretching from West Africa to southern Europe.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune also mentioned the Franco-Algerian agreement of 1968 which grants a special status to Algerians in terms of rights of movement, residence and employment in France. It has become a “standard behind which marches the army of extremists” of the right in France, who seek to repeal it, he estimated.
