Un file of “irritants” France-Algeria resurfaces while the crisis seems to be installed over time between the two countries. On January 23, the Council of the Nation (Senate) approved the law on the management, control and elimination of waste, which includes in its articles an unprecedented element: the requirement made to France to “assume fully its historical, moral and legal responsibilities in the elimination of this radioactive waste and recognize the enormous damage caused to our country and to the populations of Adrar, reggane, in ekker and other regions ”, in the words of the Minister of the Environment and the Quality of Life, Nadjiba Djilali.
Between 1960 and 1966, France carried out seventeen nuclear tests on the sites of Reggane, then in Ekker, in the Algerian Sahara. Eleven of them, all underground passages, are after the 1962 Evian agreements, which activated the independence of Algeria but of which an article allowed France to use the Sahara sites until 1967.
“A message to be heard beyond our borders”
“Let our position be clear and be the subject of a message to be heard beyond our borders,” insisted the president of the council of the nation, Salah Goudjil, during the discussions around this law which, For the moment, does not have application texts specifying the procedures to demand from Paris cleaning operations for old nuclear test sites.
Read too France-Algeria: nuclear tests at the heart of memory issues “You have become a nuclear power and you left us illnesses,” said President Abdelmadjid Tebboune during a speech at the end of December by addressing France. “Come cleanse, we don't care about your money. I will not drop the memory, I ask nothing, neither Euro nor dollars, but the dignity of our ancestors and our citizens, “added the Algerian head of state in front of the two chambers of Parliament.
This request, the Algerian president had already formulated it in his interview with The point One May 2021. Last October, before the media, Tebboune had declared, by reacting to the controversy in France on the revision of the 1968 agreements: “If you want to approach serious subjects, come and clean the sites where you have carried out nuclear experiences. There are people who still die and others are impacted. You have become nuclear power, and we have had the diseases. Come clean Oued Namous where you have developed your chemical weapons, and so far our sheep, our camels die after eating contaminated grass. This is the real question is not in a false debate on the 1968 agreement. ”
A project started under Sarkozy
Remented for decades, the existence of the B2-Namous site, where France carried out chemical weapons in the Southwest Algerian, was only revealed by an investigation by New observer. In his work, In the mysteries of powerreleased in 2017, former General Rachid Benyelles claimed that “the activities, on this desert perimeter, will stop in 1986”.
An agreement would have been signed between Presidents Bouteflika and Hollande At the end of 2012 for the depollution of this site, but no credible information provides the progress of this project.
In 2007, in the wake of the visit to Algiers of President Nicolas Sarkozy, an Algerian-French working group was set up to assess nuclear sites, establish an inventory on their dangerousness and a diagnosis for decontamination. Two other mixed working groups were created on occasion to work on the issue of archives and those of the disappeared from the Algerian War. But from a last meeting in 2016, no news had filtered these three working groups until August 2020.
Read too Nuclear tests: the army informed of radioactive clouds? In his report on the memory of the Algerian war submitted in January 2021 to Emmanuel Macron, the historian Benjamin Stora advocated “the continuation of joint work concerning the places of nuclear tests in Algeria and their consequences as well as the installation of mines at the borders ”.
In February of the same year, the head of combat engineering service, General Bouzid Boufrioua, had indicated in the official army review, El Djeich : “France must assume its historical responsibilities, especially after 122 states of the UN General Assembly ratified, on July 7, 2017, a new treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons [Tian]which is added to previous treaties. The principle of the polluter paying was also introduced and officially recognized. Now, France is not signatory to Tian.
-Between Algiers and Paris, it gets stuck
Two months later, the chief of staff of the Algerian army, Saïd Chengriha, asked his French counterpart at the time, General François Lecointre, his support “for the final management of rehabilitation operations Reggane and in Ekker sites, as well as [son] assistance for [lui] Provide topographic cards allowing the location of landfills, not discovered to date, contaminated, radioactive or chemical waste ”.
But in July 2021, the Minister of Mujahideen (Veterans Affairs) of the time, Tayeb Zitouni, had regretted that France “refuses to put the topographic cards which make it possible to determine the landfill of polluting, radioactive or chemical waste not discovered to date ”.
Read too Nuclear tests in the Sahara: Algiers accuses Paris “Unfortunately, no study is done to assess the impact on populations. The only indirect argument that we have is the spectacular increase in the number of cancers in the last decades, “had regretted Professor Mostéfa Khiati, president of the Forem and author in 2021 Algerian irradiated, a state crime. “Neither the Ministry of the Environment performs measures, however essential during each wind of sand, nor the Ministry of Health has undertaken an epidemiological study on the impact of these effects, nor the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Officially asked for the burial card of irradiated equipment … “, he said.
A taboo subject
To discover
The kangaroo of the day
Answer
“The secret clauses of the Evian agreements concerning the continuation of the tests after independence would explain the taboo that surrounds this file for years, especially in Algeria. The questions of decontamination are not asked very late while the sites were free to access, there were sheets and other contaminated materials, we were near the barracks … “, confides a specialized journalist. It was not until 1996 that the question was officially mentioned by the former Minister of Moudjahidines, Saïd Abadou, from the “zero point” of the impact of the first nuclear test in 1960, “GERBOISE BLEU ».
The international campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons (ICAN) called, on several occasions, France to contribute to the cleaning of toxic waste caused by its nuclear tests. “The majority of waste is in the open air, without any security, and accessible by the population, which creates a high level of health and environmental insecurity,” warned ICAN.
