French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Wednesday that “neither France nor Algeria had any interest in creating lasting tension” between them, despite the friction that has built up in recent weeks, reports France’s Europe1.
Speaking in the National Assembly, Barrot reaffirmed that he was “ready to go to Algiers to deal with all the issues and not just those that have been in the news in recent weeks.”
Relations between France and Algeria have deteriorated since last summer when Paris announced its support for Morocco’s autonomy plan for the disputed territory of Western Sahara, the news portal writes. The former Spanish colony has been the scene of a conflict for half a century between Morocco and the Sahrawi independence fighters of the Polisario Front, supported by Algiers.
Regarding the situation, Barrot said, “France is a sovereign country that chooses the terms of its alliances with other countries and what France intends to build with Morocco does not take anything away from what France intends to build with Algeria.”
French President Macron indicated back in July that he sides with Spain and the United States, believing that the future of Western Sahara fell “within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty.”
Other situations and legal cases have also been at issue, including Franco-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal being in prison in Algeria since mid-November. The 75-year-old, punished for threatening state security, is known to be ill.
Most recently, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau stated that “Algeria is seeking to humiliate France” and that France will have “no other option than to retaliate” after the country returned an Algerian influencer expelled by the French authorities for posting a video calling for violence.
Minister Barrot clarified that “the president (Macron) and the prime minister (Bayrou) will bring together the ministers concerned in the coming days to assess the follow-up to be given and the measures to be taken” on the development of Franco-Algerian relations.
Meanwhile, Le Figaro reported that Nicolas Lerner, the director general of the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), went to Algiers on Monday to keep channels for dialogue between the two countries open.
