A New French Bomb on the Road to Relations with Algeria

Provocative, dangerous and unprecedented statements by a member of the French government working under the directives of the French President, Emmanuel Macron, were made by Franck Riester, Minister of Foreign Trade, who paid an official visit to the Kingdom of Morocco last Thursday.

The French official indicated that the French Development Agency (AFD) “could be led”, via its Proparco subsidiary dedicated to the private sector, to finance a high voltage electric line project between Dakhla, the occupied Sahrawi territory, and Casablanca.
The French press agency (Agence France Presse) quoted a diplomatic source as saying, “This is the first time that Proparco can position itself to offer financing in this (occupied) region”.

While qualifying the announcement as “testimony of French goodwill towards Morocco”, the same source nevertheless tempers Moroccan ardour by specifying that this “does not modify France’s position in the Western Sahara issue”, but without clarifying what is meant by the French position on this sensitive issue for the Algerian side.
During his visit to Morocco at the end of last February, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, reiterated “France’s clear and constant support” for the autonomy plan proposed by the Moroccan regime in 2007, but he limited the French room of manoeuvre to “the provisions of the UN Security Council.”

Statements of the French Minister of Foreign Trade indicate that Paris is moving on a straight line and in an upward direction, contrary to the ambitions of the Algerian authorities, which have been engaged for some time, along with their French counterparts, in the process of correcting bilateral relations that have been exposed to many bumps during the last few years.

Paris is aware of the sensitivity and seriousness of the Western Sahara issue to the bilateral relations under restoration, yet it insists on continuing to destroy what was built recently because of the participation of the French public treasury in financing projects for the Moroccan occupation in the occupied Sahrawi territories is not only considered a violation of international law and United Nations resolutions that are related to this issue but rather harm to the bilateral relations, given the importance of the Western Sahara issue to Algeria’s national security.

The diplomatic source, quoted by Agence France-Presse, admitted that the public treasury’s financing of Moroccan occupation projects in the occupied Sahrawi territories constitutes a precedent, but tried to make amends in the hope of alleviating the Algerian side’s anger at this “unfriendly” position from the diplomatic perspective in international relations, by confirming that this “does not change France’s position on the Western Sahara issue,” but as the popular proverb says, “If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.”

The statements issued by the French minister in the Kingdom of Morocco, and despite the “remediation” of the diplomatic source, the funding that occurred by the French state in an occupied land is considered an implicit acknowledgement and recognition of the sovereignty of the occupying state over a land and a people deprived of their rights. This is the intent and meaning, no matter how the diplomatic source tries to manoeuvre and jump on the facts.

What Franck Riester did in Rabat was nothing but a manifestation of Paris’ trends full of support for the Moroccan occupation in Western Sahara. About two months ago, the French Foreign Minister said in Rabat: “We will support the development of this region (meaning the occupied Sahrawi territories) in support of Moroccan efforts.” Noting that Paris had given the green light last January for “Proparco” to participate in the electric highway project, which is supposed to connect the Moroccan city of Casablanca to the occupied Western Shara city of Dakhla.

Unfortunately for advocates of restoring Algerian-French relations, the new French position on Western Sahara came a few weeks after the call that took place between the Algerian President, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, during which the date of President Tebboune’s visit to France was set for next fall. A development that will not serve this visit and will undoubtedly affect bilateral relations, which are not unlikely to relapse again in the face of a new French provocation, to confirm Benjamin Stora’s statement, in which he said that some French politicians’ memory stopped in 1962.