France’s unmistakable popularity of Western Sahara “Moroccanism” [in a letter from Emmanuel Macron to King Mohammed VI on Tuesday 30 July] has blown up Franco-Algerian relations. The reaction was not long in coming. Beaten but still standing, Algeria, like a boxer wounded in the wild, closed the attack by knockout. It withdrew its ambassador from París. La Algerian diplomatic representation in France now corresponds to a chargé d’affaires. The blow will have to be rude to the Elysée who has played with fire.
It must be said that Emmanuel Macron has done nothing to improve relations that seemed more peaceful. institutional crisis since the legislative elections whose second circular took place on July 7, has not been able to name a new prime minister or an old government; On the contrary, it has blown out the embers by shamelessly supporting Morocco in its strategy of annexation of the West. Sahara.
The tenant of the Elysée was perhaps not unaware that such an initiative could be nothing more than a serious blow to relations between Algeria and France. For Algeria, which has made its struggle for just causes, for the freedom-loving colonized peoples, a matter of principle!
With its history, the history that unites it to France, a savage and barbaric colonization of more than one hundred and thirty years, it may not be otherwise. This tragic page, which will be a witness for eternity of the massacres and abuses committed during the colonial era. France had to write another one. Emmanuel Macron will be the most suitable head of state together with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to build the bridges that lead to a non-violent relationship between the two shores of the Mediterranean.
Emmanuel Macron has gone further than Pedro Sánchez in his speech in Rabat for the “Moroccoism” of Western Sahara, writes Ignacio Cembrero in El Confidencial.
Like the successor of the Spanish journalist, knowledgeable about the Sahrawi issue, the President of the Spanish Government had acquired in March 2022 that the autonomy plan under Moroccan sovereignty of the Sahrawi territory was “the maximum serious, credible and realistic basis for the solution. ” of this dispute”. .
But the French president’s letter indicates that “autonomy is the only basis for a solution to the conflict”, and goes on to state that France “considers that the offer and future of Western Sahara are within the framework of Moroccan sovereignty.
With this recognition, Emmanuel Macron put an end to three years of diplomatic crisis with Morocco, since the revelation, in the summer of 2021, of the attempted espionage of President Macron and fifteen of his ministers through the Moroccan secret services.
It remains to be seen whether Rabat will not pressure the Spanish government to join France in this recognition. And if Moroccan international relations have proven effective on this issue, they still face “resistance” from the United Kingdom and Italy. But, the Spanish journalist continues, these same international relations are based on the hard levers of the fight against illegal immigration and anti-terrorist cooperation.
Morocco had good diplomatic luck with the popularity through the United States, in December 2020, of complete Moroccan sovereignty over the Sahrawi territory. The president of the time, Donald Trump, conditioned this popularity on Rabat’s accession to the normalization agreements with Israel, known as the “Abraham Accords. “
The two men gave the distinct impression of liking and respecting each other. They aspired to manage without difficulty the issue of memory that plagues relations between the two countries. The two heads of state were due to meet this autumn in Paris, a state stop in which the country’s first magistrate, who was nominated to succeed him on September 7, was present. “My meeting with President Macron will be a meeting with history, in which we will think about things rationally and not emotionally,” Abdelmadjid Tebboune said at the end of March. An assembly that will have to go through the road. . .
Mohamed Touati
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Created in autumn 2000 by one of the founders of the newspaper Liberté, the newspaper L’Expression remains close to President Bouteflika, although it tries to cover current events without taboos. A very transparent and well-designed site, one of the most fashionable in the Algerian press, which also organizes opinion polls.
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