Emmanuel Macron and Abdelmadjid Tebboune strengthen French-Algerian ties
Emmanuel Macron, President of France, and his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, held a telephone conversation on Saturday with the aim of "deepening" diplomatic relations between France and Algeria. The two agreed to "raise relations to a level of excellence".
According to the Algerian Presidency's communications department, Macron and Tebboune held a telephone conversation in which they discussed various issues of common interest.
As indicated by the Algerian Presidency via the social network Twitter, the two presidents 'discussed bilateral relations and affirmed their determination to work for their deepening, particularly with regard to the rapprochement of points of view between the two presidents and the great convergence to raise these relations to a level of excellence', all with Macron's new mandate.
The two heads of state discussed various issues such as the Sahel, a region that is always in conflict due to the jihadist and criminal terrorist activity there, and from which the French security forces are leaving after years of intervention in initiatives such as Operation Barkhane; and the situation in Libya, which is experiencing a major standoff between Fathi Bashagha, the new prime minister appointed by the House of Representatives of the Eastern Administration in Tobruk, and Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, the former interim prime minister who was appointed by the warring parties in the civil war to conduct an electoral process that has not yet taken place and has been put on hold, causing a political deadlock.
Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Emmanuel Macron also discussed other regional and international issues, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as reported by the AFP news agency. In the last few hours, the French president travelled to Ukraine together with Mario Draghi, Prime Minister of Italy, and Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany, to show his support for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenski, who continues to insist on his request for more heavy weapons to deal with attacks from Vladimir Putin's Russia and on speeding up Ukraine's accession to the European Union as much as possible, just when the European Commission gave its approval to Ukraine's entry into the EU, albeit under certain conditions.
This new contact between Emmanuel Macron and Abdelmadjid Tebboune, along with others made recently, such as the congratulations from the Algerian side to Macron on his "brilliant" re-election as president, represent a new diplomatic breakthrough between Algeria and France after the bilateral crisis that occurred when the French president claimed that the North African country had built its structure on a political-military system after it had gained its independence from the French metropolis in 1962.
Following this comment by Emmanuel Macron, Algeria withdrew its ambassador in Paris last October, but decided to reinstate him on 6 January after the situation had been resolved.
In fact, Emmanuel Macron took an important step when he recently acknowledged France's 'unjustified crimes' in the repression of Algerian demonstrators in 1961 when France was Algeria's metropolis. The French president became the first leader of the Fifth Republic to commemorate the killing of some 200 Algerians by the French police six decades later.
The goodwill between France and Algeria thus continues. Indeed, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian pointed out during a visit to Algiers in mid-April the "indispensable" nature of French-Algerian cooperation for stability and security in North Africa and the Sahel, as reported by the EFE news agency.
