The increase in tensions, a beginning of calm and, ultimately, a crisis that leaves more beautiful. The relationship between France and Algeria is delivering during these last hours again. Last element: Emmanuel Macron decided on Tuesday, April 15, expel twelve Algerian agents, in a similar measure of Algeria, accused of being responsible for this brutal degradation.
The French president, who personally had remained on the phone with his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on March 31 to relaunch the dialogue after months of Scrable, also “decided to remember for consultations to the French ambassador to Algiers, Stéphane Romatet,” the Ministry announced in a press release.
Starting point for this rebirth of tensions: the Algerian authorities declared on Sunday non gracious twelve French officials of the Ministry of Interior, giving them 48 hours to leave Algeria. It was then a matter of retaliation of the arrest in France, followed by an arrest agent arrest.
Emmanuel Macron rises on the front line
Initially, the French head of state was delayed, but seeing that Algerian power did not return to his decision, he decided to go to the front line.
The expulsion of these French, who went to France on Tuesday night, “ignores the basic rules of our legal procedures” and “is unjustified and incomprehensible,” said Elysée. Who decided to proceed “symmetrically”, also within 48 hours “, to the expulsion of twelve agents” consular and Algerian diplomats.
“The Algerian authorities assume the responsibility of a brutal degradation of our bilateral relations,” he judges the elysée. For the head of the French diplomacy Jean-Noël Barot, who had gone to Algiers in early April to sew the ties, Algiers “chose the climb.”
An “appropriate” answer
Algeria had defended his “Sovereign” decision on Monday night at night, taking French Minister Bruno Retailleau to the French minister “all the responsibility” of these new dissensions. This French right figure has made the voice of a line of firmness in recent months against Algeria, especially in migratory matters.
However, “Bruno Retailleau has nothing to do with this judicial issue,” said Jean-Noël Barot on Tuesday, insisting on the independence of French justice.
Algeria must “continue maintaining its obligations” in matters of migration and security despite the “disputes” with France, added Tuesday night.
Three men, including an employee in one of Algeria’s consulates in France, were accused (accused) on Friday in Paris for arrest, kidnapping, kidnapping or arbitrary detention followed by liberation before the seventh day, in relation to a terrorist company, according to the French national anti -terrorist prosecution.
In this case of kidnapping that was aimed at the opponent of the Algerian regime Amir Boukhors, the influencer nicknamed Amir Dz, these men are also prosecuted by the Association of Criminal Terrorist Criminals. They were placed in pretrial detention.
Speaking Tuesday night after the Elysée, Bruno Retilleau estimated that the French response was “totally appropriate” and judged “inadmissible that France is a patio of recreation for Algerian services.”
“Take the dialogue”
Despite this sudden relapse, Elysée considered that “the same interest as France and Algeria” was “to resume dialogue”, urging Algiers to “show responsibility.”
“The dialogue, still, but not unidirectional,” said Jean-Noël Barot.
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.
Jean-Noël Barrot considered that Boalem Sansal, sentenced to prison in the first instance in Algeria “, did not have to do the” diplomatic problems. “And I dare to believe, given his state of health and his situation, to a gesture of humanity by the Algerian authorities.”
The two daughters of the writer also called Emmanuel Macron to obtain their launch as quickly as possible, in a forum published Tuesday night at the Figaro site, qualifying this request as “last impulse.”
According to historian Pierre Vermeren, a professor at the University of Sorbonne in Paris, “the crisis shows that within the army, the” personal “Algerian,” there are part of the generals or colonels who want to break with France, who do not want to reconcile, who want to sabotage the work of acquiring normal relationships, “he told AFP.
Source: BFM TV
