Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau estimated at CNEWS on Tuesday, April 15, which was “unacceptable that France was a recreation patio for Algerian services”, while tensions between Algiers and Paris are experiencing a new escalation.
Emmanuel Macron decided to expel “twelve agents that serve in the consular and diplomatic network of Algeria in France” and remember for consultations the French ambassador to Algiers Stéphane Romatet in reprisals for similar expulsions announced by Algeria.
“This answer seems completely appropriate,” said Bruno Retailleau in CNews. “Now, we impose a balance of power,” he added.
“I do not recognize any country” the “right to despise or humiliate France,” hit the Interior Minister.
“Darkness” of France
In its press release, the Elysée expresses its “dismay” after this new cold sudden blow that arrives fifteen days after a call between President Macron and his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune, which is supposed to relate the relations after months of crisis.
The Algerian authorities declared on Sunday, not a pleasant person of the Ministry of Interior, giving them 48 hours to leave Algeria, in response to the arrest in France, then to their detention, of an Algerian consular agent.
Algeria had defended his “sovereign” decision on Monday night, taking the French minister Bruno Retailleau to the French minister “all responsibility” of these renewed tensions. This French right figure has made the voice of a line of firmness in recent months against Algeria, especially in migratory matters. “Bruno Retailleau has nothing to do with this legal issue,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barot insisted on the independence of French justice on Tuesday.
Tensions for several months
Fifteen days ago, the two countries linked to a common history often painful had decided to change the page in a rare intensity crisis that had precipitated them to the edge of the break.
He had begun eight months before when Emmanuel Macron had provided a total support for an autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty for Western Sahara, claimed for 50 years by the separatists of the polisarium supported by Algiers. Algeria had immediately retired to her ambassador to Paris. The two heads of state then instructed their ministers of foreigners to recover the dialogue on all the “irritating” issues, including the immigration issue and arrest of the Franco-Algerio Boalem Sansal writer.
Source: BFM TV
