2024-02-13 11:37:26
This is an unprecedented and discourteous diplomatic gesture. As the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, was preparing to visit Algeria, he received a request for postponement from his Algerian counterpart, citing a “busy schedule”. This last minute turnaround is only the latest episode in a series of tensions between Algeria and Spain, which are struggling to normalize their relations.
No official announcement has been made by the Algerian authorities on the visit of José Manuel Albares, which was scheduled for Monday February 12. There is therefore no reason to speak of cancellation, but rather of postponement indefinitely. This is not the first time that Algeria has demonstrated a lack of transparency and communication regarding the visits of foreign personalities to Algeria and the travel of Algerian officials abroad. This dates back to the cancellation of President Tebboune’s visit to Paris, initially scheduled for May 2, 2023. A visit which had been canceled a fortnight before it took place, following a telephone interview between Ahmed Attaf and the French minister, Catherine. Colonna. However, this visit was almost confirmed during the March 24 telephone call between Emmanuel Macron and the Algerian head of state. The day before the announcement of the “postponement to a later date”, not to say cancellation, a delegation of experts from the Élysée and the Quai d’Orsay had stayed in Algiers to finalize the protocol program for the chef’s visit. of the Algerian State in Paris. Since then, no date has been set for a visit by Tebboune to France, despite repeated, but futile, reminders from the Algerian side.
Today, history is repeating itself with Spain, but in a more brutal way. We waited until almost eight hours before the Spanish minister’s plane took off to “postpone” a visit scheduled for several days. In reality, this is not a postponement, but rather a cancellation. No replacement date has been proposed or set to be able to talk regarding a postponement. The Algerians have, quite simply, flouted diplomatic rules.
The reason, according to sources close to the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, cited by several media, would be linked to the joint communiqué that the two parties were to sign at the end of the meeting of the two ministers to seal the normalization of relations between the two countries. . Exchanges between the collaborators of the two ministers, Algerian and Spanish, might not lead to a common position on the question of the Sahara, the former Spanish colony. An issue which continues to weigh on Algeria’s relations with Spain and which is at the origin of the diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
Other sources indicate that upon his return from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where he had attended the World Defense Exhibition in Riyadh, General Chengriha would have opposed the visit of the Spanish minister. The latter would be close to Moroccan theses on the Sahara, according to the Algerian military. And suddenly, the crisis between the two countries resurfaces.
A crisis that we thought was over, following a cold which lasted more than twenty months and three months following the start of normalization between the two capitals with the appointment of a new Algerian ambassador to Spain last November. The visit of the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, scheduled for Monday February 12 at the invitation of his Algerian counterpart Ahmed Attaf, was to open a new page between the two countries.
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