Algeria: Macron won’t ask for a ‘pardon’ but hopes for President Tebbun’s visit this year

The French President looks forward to welcoming his counterpart Abdelmajid Tebbune to France in 2023 to continue the work of remembrance and reconciliation between the two countries. “I don’t need to apologize, that’s not the point, that word will cut all ties,” he explains in a lengthy interview with Algerian writer Kamel Daoud for the French weekly Le Point, published on Wednesday evening.

“The worst thing would be to conclude: We apologize and everyone goes their own way He says. “The work of memory and history is not the balance of all accounts,” he continues. “On the contrary, it is a statement that there is something inexpressible, something misunderstood, something perhaps insoluble, something unforgivable,” he emphasizes. The issue of apologies is at the heart of bilateral relations and recurring tensions between the two countries.

In 2020, Algeria just welcomed a report by historian Benjamin Stor in which he advocates a series of gestures aimed at reconciling the two countries while excluding “remorse” and “apology”. “I also hope that President Tebbun will be able to come to France in 2023,” Emmanuel Macron notes, to continue the “unprecedented work of friendship (..)” after a visit he himself made to Algiers in August 2022, despite on a stormy walk in Oran on the last day.

Possible meditation on the burial of Abdelkader

Asked about the possibility of the Algerian president holding a meditation ceremony on the graves of members of the retinue of Abdelkader, heroes of the resistance to French colonization, buried in Amboise, he considered that this would be “a very beautiful and very powerful moment” and that he “wished for it.”

“I believe it will make sense in the history of the Algerian people. For the French, this will be an opportunity to understand realities that are often hidden,” he said again. Abdel Kader (1808-1883) was detained at Amboise along with several members of his family from 1848 to 1852.