Xavier Driencourt: “Algerian-French relations are strained”

France's Ambassador to Algiers His Excellency, Xavier Driencourt, was the distinguished guest Wednesday of the Echorouk Forum during which he largely dwelt on the state of the Algerian-French relations and how they should be promoted for the mutual benefit of the peoples of the two countries. 

• The Algerian-French relations have never been as tense as today on account of the Algerian side’s firm demand that France should officially recognize the crimes perpetrated during the colonial period.
• According to the French Ambassador, bilateral ties are currently at a rather low ebb on account of a number of sensitive files which have not been settled yet.
• However, a possible encounter between Bouteflika and Sarkozy could erase many divergences between the two sides, he surmised.
• Xavier Driencourt said that the current tension created by vacuums which need to be filled by economic and social projects, was not to be dispelled by governments and officials only but also by the civil society members as the relations between the Algerian and French peoples have taken an even larger scope.
• The distinguished guest of the Echorouk Forum stressed that these sensitive files which have strained the Algerian-French relations should be tackled with an extreme caution and carefulness.
• “We should fulfill an important task and achieve major bilateral projects so as to fill the numerous gaps”, he asserted.
• The French diplomat further indicated that one should not view these relations only through the perspective of economic and commercial exchanges or links between official governments, stressing that the human considerations should not at all be neglected through the active involvement of the civil society as part of the reinforcement process of Algerian-French relations.
• Our interlocutor underlined, in this respect, that the settlement of these outstanding files, which are hampering the smooth evolution of the Algerian-French relations, depended on the political will of the two countries.
• Xavier Driencourt also declared that the French authorities had, up to now, taken no stringent measures at the level of the Paris airports.
• He affirmed that the controls there were quite ordinary and concerned all the travelers hailing from those countries included in a special list requiring control reinforcement.
• In this connection, he said that he had conveyed to Paris the Algerian authorities’ request to have the Algerian travelers scrapped from this special list.
• Xavier Driencourt underlined that the relevant French authorities had asked for some time to examine the possibility of living up to the expectations of the Algerian side.
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