Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Saturday ruled out during a television interview the idea of a visit to France, which he considered humiliating in the context of once again very tense relations between the two countries.
“I will not go to Canossa,” said Tebboune. Popularized by German Chancellor Bismarck at the end of the 19th century, the expression “to go to Canossa” 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.
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 Moroccan autonomy plan for the settlement of the Sahara question and for Morocco’s sovereignty.
Algiers immediately recalled its ambassador and reduced its diplomatic representation, 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 Mr. 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.
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.
Mr. 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.
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