French Foreign Minister Puts Relations With Algeria On The Back Burner!

The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stephane Séjourné, exposed the Algerian-French relations to risks that could lead to a new setback, a setback that occurred while he was talking about his country’s relations with the Moroccan regime and the place of the Sahrawi issue in its foreign policy.
Stephane Sejourné said in an interview with three European newspapers: the French regional newspaper (Ouest France), the German “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and the Polish newspaper (Gazeta Wyborcza): “Since I took over the Foreign Ministry, we have had several contacts (with the Moroccan authorities). The President of the Republic (Emmanuel Macron) personally asked me to invest in French-Moroccan relations and also to write a new chapter in our relations, and I will commit myself to this.”
Based on his conviction that French-Moroccan relations are determined by Paris’s position on the Sahrawi issue, Stephane Sejourné flirted with the Moroccan regime, saying that France “has always been on time, even on the most sensitive issues, such as the Western Sahara issue, which has received clear and continuous support from France in terms of self-governance.”
He added: “The plan has been a reality since 2007 (the date the plan was launched). We add that it is time to move forward. I will do my best in the coming weeks and months to bring France and Morocco closer (…) while respecting the Moroccans,” in what seemed to be a flirtation with Sejourné for the Moroccan regime, but which would undoubtedly leave unpleasant repercussions for Algeria.
Until today, Stephane Sejourné was one of the French figures most hostile to the Moroccan regime, accusing it of being behind the regulations issued by the European Parliament, which condemned Rabat for its suppression of freedom of expression, its imprisonment of journalists outside the law, and its involvement in political corruption that affected the European Parliament and for which European parliamentarians were imprisoned. Because “Sigourney” was the head of the group of French representatives of the “Renaissance” party, which was founded by President Macron and led him to the presidency.
Moroccan-French relations are in a state of coldness since the French authorities received confirmations that the Moroccan secret service spied on the phone of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his senior aides in the Elysee Palace and the government palace (Matignon) through the “Pegasus” system developed by the “NSO” Zionist company which is the incident that, as is known, caused Macron to insult the Moroccan King, Mohammed VI, as stated by the Moroccan Royal palace intellectual residing in France, Tahar Benjelloun.
The remarkable rapprochement on the Algeria-Paris axis has also contributed to the Moroccan regime’s anger towards France, which it considered its eternal ally. Observers believe that the famous statement of the King of Morocco, in which he said that the position on Western Sahara is “the clear criterion”. “The simple one that measures the sincerity of friendships and the effectiveness of partnerships,” was directed primarily at France.
It is well known that French diplomacy, under the leadership of former right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy, was behind the launch of the autonomy plan in 2007 and that it defended and worked to market it. However, Paris, in the era of President Macron, is no longer that fierce defender of this plan, but rather it took steps backward in 2022, when the “Pegasus” scandal was at its peak, as the French representative to the United Nations, Nicolas de Rivière, did not want to comment as usual after his country voted “yes” to extend the work of the United Nations mission for the referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO), in October 2022.
To date, the French authorities have not responded to the “Mohammed VI criterion”. Paris, which was the first supporter of the Moroccan regime in the Western Sahara issue, is today far behind other European countries, such as Spain, which supported the autonomy plan in March 2022, before theoretically rejecting it in September 2022 and 2023, as Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez did not mention the autonomy plan in his two statements at the United Nations, focusing on supporting the efforts of the United Nations, which prompted the Algerian authorities to restore the bridges of communication with Madrid, waiting for the points to be put on the table during the official visit of the Spanish Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, to Algeria as from today.