Algerian President Demands ‘Total Respect’ From France

Algerian President Demands ‘Total Respect’ From France
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune
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Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Sunday demanded ‘total respect’ from France following a row over visas and critical comments from Paris about the North African country.

Africa Daily News, New York gathered that last weekend Algeria recalled its ambassador from Paris while also placing restrictions on French military planes from its airspace, which France regularly uses to reach its forces battling jihadists in the Sahel region to the south.

The moves are coming on the heels of a bitter row over visas, followed by media reports that French President Emmanuel Macron had told descendants of Algeria’s 1954-1962 war of independence that Algeria was ruled by a ‘political-military system’ that had ‘totally re-written’ its history.

The office of Algeria’s president responded by saying the comments, which have not been denied, were an ‘interference’ in the country’s internal affairs.

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On Sunday Tebboune spoke publicly for the first time about the row with France, demanding “total respect” from the former colonial power.

The return of the Algerian ambassador to France “is conditional on total respect for the Algerian state”, Tebboune told local media outlets.

‘We forget that it (Algeria) was once a French colony… History should not be falsified,’ he added.

‘We can’t act like nothing happened,’ Tebboune said of Algeria’s history and its French colonial past.

Relations between the two countries have often been strained but never had they hit such a new low as in recent days.

Macron’s remarks last week to French daily Le Monde were widely picked up by Algerian media, which slammed them as “vitriolic”.

The French president reportedly criticised what he called the “official history” which Algeria had written for itself, saying it was ‘not based on truths’.

And he described Tebboune as being ‘trapped in a system which is very tough’.

Macron also said that a French decision to slash the number of visas it grants to citizens of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia would have no impact on students or business figures.

AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK

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