Algeria demands France’s ‘total respect’: President Abdelmadjid Tebboune
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Sunday demanded France’s “total respect”, following a row over visas and critical comments from Paris about the North African country.
The return of the Algerian ambassador to France “is conditional on total respect for the Algerian state”, Tebboune told local media.
“We forget that it (Algeria) was once a French colony… History should not be falsified,” added the president, whose country last weekend recalled its ambassador from Paris and banned French military planes from its airspace amid the tensions with Paris.
“We can’t act like nothing happened,” Tebboune said in his first public reaction to the row with France, of Algeria’s history and its French colonial past.
Algeria’s moves came after 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.
“Was there an Algeria nation before French colonisation?” Macron reportedly asked in remarks published by French daily Le Monde.
By AFP
