French Prime Minister's visit to Algeria postponed
The French Prime Minister, Jean Castex, was due to visit the Algerian capital on Sunday 11 April. However, the visit has been postponed due to the bad COVID-19 infection figures that the African country has been experiencing in recent days - at least this is the official version that has led to the cancellation of Castex's trip. According to the French prime minister's office, the meeting could not have been held "satisfactorily", so they have decided to postpone it until the situation improves in both countries. For the time being, subject to the evolution of the pandemic, no new date has been set for the meeting between Jean Castex and his Algerian counterpart, Abdelaziz Djera.
The French and Algerian representatives were due to chair a High-Level Intergovernmental Committee between the two countries, which had not been held since 2017 because of the Hirak social protest movement. It should be recalled that this ultimately led to the fall of the then president of Algeria, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in 2019. At the end of 2020, there was already an intention to resume talks between the two countries, but the hospitalisation at that time of Abdelmadjid Tebboune, President of Algeria, made this impossible. Now, it is the consequences of the pandemic that will once again prevent the meeting from taking place.
On this occasion, it was planned to discuss several issues and even sign an agreement, the content of which is not known. One of the objectives of the meeting scheduled for Sunday was to extend aid and establish a line of cooperation between France and its former colony until 1962. However, if there is one issue in particular on which the country presided over by Emmanuel Macron does not feel particularly comfortable, it is Algeria's independence. Although it is true that Macron has already made some progress in this area, such as acknowledging the torture and murder of Algerian independence leader Ali Boumendjel.
Last Thursday, in preparation for a meeting that will not take place, Algeria's chief of staff, Said Chengriha, met with his French counterpart, General Lecointre. General Lecointre became the first French army chief to visit Algiers since 2014. One of the issues in which the Algerian side is most interested is related to the responsibilities of France's nuclear tests in the Sahara. Until now, these areas have been confined to a certain diplomatic discretion between the two countries. Algeria hopes that this issue, which it considers of vital importance, will gain weight in relations between the two countries and that they will sit down to negotiate about it.
France conducted up to 17 nuclear tests between 1960 and 1966 in the Sahara region, both before and after Algerian independence in 1962. The meeting between the two army chiefs was used by Algeria to publicly request Paris' "support" for the "rehabilitation" of the Reggane and In Eker areas. The dispute over the health and environmental consequences of this former atomic site in the Sahara has continued to fuel the unease of memory on both sides of the Mediterranean, making it a priority for the Algerian side to be able to unblock a situation that is more urgent for them than for the French side.
However, the cancellation of the French prime minister's visit to Algeria is not a good sign. Various sources suggest that the reasons linked to the COVID-19 cases are not the real cause of the postponement, but that it is due to a disagreement between the parties over the format of the meeting, in which Algeria would have liked to have a greater say. Whatever the reason, the visit will have to wait, as will Algeria's aspirations to unblock the nuclear test sites that it so desperately wants.
