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August 26, 2022
13:13 pm
Algeria: (AFP)
French President Emmanuel Macron will continue, on Friday, his three-day visit to Algeria, with the aim of “building the future” and promoting “strategic partnership”, without obscuring anything from the colonial past, with a focus on young entrepreneurs and startups.
On Friday, the French president will visit the European cemetery of Saint Eugen, which was the main cemetery in the capital during the French colonization of Algeria, to honor the soldiers “who died for France.”
On the first day of his visit, Thursday, he went to the monument to Algeria’s martyrs in the war of independence (1954-1962) once morest France.
In another important stop, on Friday, from his visit under the slogan of relaunching the bilateral partnership, he will meet with young entrepreneurs in the hope of establishing a French-Algerian incubator for digital startups.
Emmanuel Macron will also visit the Great Mosque of Algiers before heading to Oran, a city known for its openness and creativity.
mutual optimism
On Thursday, the French President and his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, dedicated their reconciliation, following months of diplomatic dispute. After a meeting that lasted more than two hours, the two heads of state seemed optimistic.
Tebboune, who received his French counterpart at the airport, spoke of “encouraging results”, which make it possible to “draw promising prospects in the special partnership that binds us.”
He announced that France and Algeria will re-launch several governmental committees, especially in the economic and strategic fields.
The visit coincides with the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and the declaration of Algeria’s independence in 1962. The French president stressed the two countries’ desire to look to the future and “work together on this complex and painful common past.”
Algeria and Paris will form a “joint committee of historians”, in order to “look at the entirety of this historical period from the beginning of colonialism to the war of liberation, without prohibitions and with the will of full access to our archives.”
Gas and visas
Tebboune and Macron touched on the situation in Mali, from which the French army recently withdrew, and in other Sahel countries, Libya and Western Sahara, which “requires joint efforts to consolidate stability in the region,” according to the Algerian president.
The issue of Algerian gas shipments to Europe is also present, even if the Elysee confirmed that it was “not the subject of the visit.”
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Europeans have looked to Algeria; The largest gas producer in Africa and one of the top ten countries in the world in this field, as part of their efforts to reduce their dependence on Russian gas rapidly.
This is the second time that Emmanuel Macron has visited Algeria since taking office, following his first visit in December 2017.
Relations between the two countries at the time were in good shape with the young French president born following 1962, who had called French colonialism a “crime once morest humanity” before his election.
But relations quickly deteriorated, due to memories that are difficult to reconcile following 132 years of colonialism, a brutal war and the departure of one million French from Algeria in 1962.
Algeria did not issue apologies for colonialism. In October 2021, Emmanuel Macron’s statements regarding the Algerian “political-military regime” and the Algerian nation caused a serious rift.
Since then, Macron has made great efforts and the two presidents have gradually resumed the bilateral partnership.
But the sensitive issue of visas granted by France, whose number has been cut in half, still affects mutual relations.
Macron referred to this, Thursday, when he spoke of decisions taken for a “chosen mobility” in favor of athletes, entrepreneurs or universities in order to “build more joint projects”.
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