Relations between Algeria and France have been strained since Paris supported the Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
Postponed several times since May 2023 and finally scheduled for the beginning of October, the visit to France by Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboun will ultimately not take place. “I will not go to Canossa,” he said in a television interview on Saturday.
Relations between Algiers and Paris are still tense after the announcement at the end of July of Paris’ support for the Moroccan autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
Algiers immediately withdrew its ambassador and reduced its diplomatic representation, keeping only one charge d’affaires.
“Algeria was chosen for the big replacement”
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,” insisted the Algerian president, accusing a “hateful minority” in France of blocking any progress on the memorial issue.
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Addressing the issue of French nuclear tests in Algeria, Mr. Tebboune 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.
The Franco-Algerian agreement of 196
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.
In December 2023, the French National Assembly rejected a text asking the French authorities to denounce the agreement.
Signed in 1968, when France needed help for its economy, the agreement excludes Algerians from common law in matters of immigration. Since then, they have not had a residence permit in France but “certificates of residence”.
They can establish themselves freely to carry out a commercial activity or an independent profession and they have access to a ten-year residence permit more quickly than nationals of other countries.
