The Algerian authorities asked twelve agents of the French Embassy to leave the territory, the chief of French diplomacy announced on Monday April 14, adding that this decision was a response to the arrest of three Algerian nationals in France, including a consular agent.
“I ask the Algerian authorities to renounce these expulsion measures unrelated to the current legal proceedings,” said Jean-Noël Barrot in a written declaration transmitted to journalists. “If the decision to return our agents was maintained, we will have no choice but to answer them immediately,” he added.
Read also: Jean-Louis Thiériot: “Our relationship with Algeria is a chimera that weakens France”
-Reconciliation put to the test
Just a week after the trip of the French diplomacy to Algiers, the reconciliation between France and Algeria is already put to the test with the detention of this Algerian consular agent. The Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs thundered on Saturday evening against “this new unacceptable and unspeakable development (which) will cause great damage to Algerian-French relations”. He undertook not to “leave this situation without consequences” and “received” on Saturday the French ambassador to Algeria, Stéphane Romatet, to “express (s) to live protest”.
Read also: From Boualem Sansal to the “conspiracy” of the DGSE … between Algeria and France, six months of twisted blows
These words contrast with the announcement last week by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot, of “a new phase” for relations between Paris and Algiers, after an interview with his counterpart Ahmed Attaf and especially with the Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune. French President Emmanuel Macron and Abdelmadjid Tebboune had acted a few days earlier the end of a crisis of rare intensity, which had led the two countries to the edge of diplomatic rupture.
