Guest on a TV showOpen Box TVWeb TV founded and directed by Alain Juillet, former director of intelligence at the French General Directorate of External Security (DGSE), and presented as a “strategic analysis workshop», Xavier Driencourt, Paris ambassador to Algiers under French presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron, stressed that “among Moroccans, there is the feeling that they have been wronged by the delimitation of the borders of colonization».
The author of “The Algerian enigma: chronicles of an embassy in Algiers”, published in 2022 by Editions de L’Observatoire, recounts that while delving into the archives of the Quai d’Orsay, where he had used to writing his second book on the Evian Accords, he is “came across a meeting which took place in April 1962 between General de Gaulle and the King of Morocco Hassan II“. During this meeting, which took place between the two heads of state after the signing of the Evian agreements and before the independence of Algeria, “de Gaulle questions the sovereign about Algeria, and Hassan II replies that it will be the cancer of Africa».
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During this exchange, “King Hassan II asks de Gaulle to rectify the borders for the benefit of Morocco as long as Algeria is still French», adds Driencourt in the same vein. “He tells him that the map of Algeria has wronged us. We must rectify the borders of this French territory and give us back part of the Sahara (eastern, Editor’s note)», he reports.
«The Sahara was never part of Algeria», replies in the same vein Alain Juillet, before adding: “The truth must be said. The Tuaregs are angry with us, and everyone in the South is angry with us, saying that this part was never Algeria. If we had not given Algeria this part of the Sahara which goes to the border of Mali, Niger and Chad, we would not be here».
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«There was De Gaulle’s desire to try to keep the Sahara where oil had just been discovered, before making it an international zone shared between neighboring countries. In the end, it was Algeria who won.», concludes Driencourt about this aspect.
